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Here are all the strategies from the 9/19 PD

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Here is a neat, and clear guide if looking to grade this way..or just to take a peak at!

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Here is a quick read on the buzz with additional info you can get. It is worth exploring and seeing!

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Each week brings some new idea that teachers are supposed to implement, while still preparing lessons, grading papers, and keeping their classrooms in some semblance of order. Amid all these challenges, a call to change grading policies can seem particularly unrealistic.

One grading practice that is gaining popularity is standards-based grading, which involves measuring students' proficiency on well-defined course objectives (Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006). Although many districts adopt standards-based grading in addition to traditional grades, standards-based grading can and should replace traditional point-based grades.

My school, Montrose High School, is located in a small but rapidly growing rural community in southwestern Colorado. We serve a community that is primarily white but that has a significant Latino population. After spending the last three years implementing standards-based grading in my high school math classroom, I have discovered seven solid reasons for replacing point-based grades with a standards-based system.

Reason 1: Grades Should Have Meaning

An A means the student has completed proficient work on all course objectives and advanced work on some objectives.

A B means the student has completed proficient work on all course objectives.

A C means the student has completed proficient work on the most important objectives, although not on all objectives. The student can continue to the next course.

A D means the student has completed proficient work on at least one-half of the course objectives but is missing some important objectives and is at significant risk of failing the next course in the sequence. The student should repeat the course if it is a prerequisite for another course.

An F means the student has completed proficient work on fewer than one-half of the course objectives and cannot successfully complete the next course in sequence.

Reason 2: We Need to Challenge the Status Quo

Many notions I had at the beginning of my career about grading didn't stand up to real scrutiny. The thorny issue of homework is one example of how the status quo needed to change. I once thought it was essential to award points to students simply for completing homework. I didn't believe students would do homework unless it was graded. And yet, in my classroom, students who were clearly learning sometimes earned low grades because of missing work. Conversely, some students actually learned very little but were good at "playing school." Despite dismal test scores, these students earned decent grades by turning in homework and doing extra credit. They would often go on to struggle in later courses, while their parents watched and worried.

Over the past three years, I have radically changed how I formally assess homework-I don't. Of course, it is essential for students to do homework that is tied closely to learning objectives and for students to see those connections (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Systematic and extensive feedback on assignments sends students the message that they can and should do homework as practice. A typical homework assignment for my students consists of a small collection of problems, each of which is linked to a learning objective. At first, I make those connections for my students, but eventually they make them on their own.

When I assign homework, I discuss with my students where and how it applies to their assessments. My goal is to get students to constantly ask themselves, "Do I know this? Can I do this?" To my surprise, my homework completion rates have remained steady over the past three years. Some students don't do all of the homework that I assign, but they know that they are accountable for mastering the standard connected to it. Of course, not every student who needs to practice always does so, but I am amazed and encouraged that students ask me for extra practice fairly regularly.

Reason 3: We Can Control Grading Practices

One of the biggest sources of frustration in schools today is the sense that we are at the mercy of factors we teachers cannot control. We cannot control student socioeconomic levels, school funding, our salaries, our teaching assignments, increasing class sizes, difficult parents, or a host of other important issues. However, we can control how we assess students.

When I approached my principal and district officials with the idea of using an experimental grading system, I received support and encouragement from all of them. In addition, a number of colleagues have been intrigued and want to make standards-based grading work in their classrooms.

If a teacher must use a point system to satisfy an administrative mandate or to use a particular grade book, that teacher can still use a standards-based system. The crucial idea is to use a system that is not based on the inappropriate use of averages. The system must not allow students to mask their level of understanding with their attendance, their level of effort, or other peripheral issues.

I have found that avoiding point values that might appear in a traditional percentage-based system is helpful because parents and students can get confused if they see numbers that look like what they've seen in the past but refer to a different scale. Teachers who have to assign points can avoid this confusion by using completely different numbers. A point value in the range of 1 to 10, for example, would not have the strong associations of a point value of 85, and thus would not be as easily misinterpreted.

Reason 4: Standards-Based Grading Reduces Meaningless Paperwork

Since I adopted standards-based grading, my load of meaningless paperwork has been drastically reduced, which provides time for more important considerations. Standards-based grading enables me to get the most from every piece of paper students turn in.

Writing feedback only on selected homework problems saves my time when marking papers while still giving me a sense of where students are in their learning. These homework assignments and other formative assessments help me judge the progress of the group as a whole before deciding how to proceed.

I don't assess student mastery of any objective until I am confident that a reasonable number of students will score proficiently, and that makes each assessment mean much more. Students who are still struggling after a significant portion of the class has demonstrated mastery can retest individually. The bottom line is that when I review any set of papers, I walk away knowing a great deal more about what my students know than I ever did before.

Reason 5: It Helps Teachers Adjust Instruction

Imagine two different grade books for the same set of students, as shown in Figure 1. Which one of the two better illustrates what students know and what they still need to learn?

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The standards-based grade book gives a wealth of information to help the teacher adjust instruction. Note that two objectives (1 and 3) may require more class instruction. The notations for Objective 2, on the other hand, suggest that the class only needs practice and one student needs some reteaching.

Students can also see much more information about their learning. In the traditional grade book, Amanda would assume she is in great shape, but standards-based grading reveals that she has not mastered a crucial concept.

Gifted and talented students can be truly challenged in a standards-based classroom because if they show early mastery of fundamental skills and concepts, they can then concentrate on more challenging work that is at higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy or that seeks connections among objectives.

Students who struggle can continue to retest and use alternate assessments until they show proficiency, and they are not penalized for needing extended time. I guide students with special needs to modify their work and, if needed, develop different ways of demonstrating that they've met their proficiency goals. Their working styles can be easily accommodated in this system because modified assignments and assessments require no special adjustments in the grade book. The grade book simply shows where they are in meeting the standards, without reference to how they are demonstrating their learning or what modifications needed to be made.

Reason 6: It Teaches What Quality Looks Like

In the adult world, everything is a performance assessment. If adults on the job make poor decisions or cannot determine the quality of their own work, the results are generally undesirable. Quality matters, and the ability to measure the quality of one's own work is a learned skill.

So how can we teach this essential skill? One way to teach quality is to demand it. We must create an environment where standards can and must be met and where students are not permitted to submit substandard work without being asked to revise.

If we base our grades on standards rather than attendance, behavior, or extra credit (which often has nothing to do with course objectives), we can actually help students grapple with the idea of quality and walk away with a higher degree of self-sufficiency. We can and should report information about student performance in areas like attendance and effort, but we can report it separately from academic achievement (O'Connor, 2007; Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006).

Reason 7: It's a Launchpad to Other Reforms

When I began using standards-based grading, I quickly discovered that I needed to reexamine my curriculum. Each class needed a clear and concise set of standards with precise levels of mastery. This prompted a number of discussions with other teachers in my department, and each year we continue to adapt our objectives. No one can use standards-based grading without clear standards.

In addition to improving curriculum, I have found new ways to use formative assessments and intervention strategies. My work with special education students and English language learners in particular goes much more smoothly because all the modification needed is already built into what I do. I have also been able to work much more effectively with parents by giving them better information.

How do students respond to this style of grading? Of course, their reactions vary. It takes time, discussion, and reflection for students to understand their rights and responsibilities in such a system, and teachers must be patient as students and parents adjust. Many students have expressed increased satisfaction with having a larger degree of control over their grades, although some students do not like the revisions they are required to do. Some struggle to overcome test anxiety and need access to alternate assessments.

As for parents, many of them simply want opportunities for their children to succeed, so they are grateful for the revision and retesting. Each year, parents ask thoughtful questions, with some noting that this method of grading is more similar to evaluation in the workplace.

These seven reasons to change to standards-based grading are merely a starting point. High school teachers need to hold their own practices up to scrutiny and decide whether those practices are worth keeping. By doing so, we unleash a force for change that we can control, with our students and parents as partners.

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Seven Reasons for Standards-Based Grading - ASCD

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Each week brings some new idea that teachers are supposed to implement, while still preparing lessons, grading papers, and keeping their classrooms in some semblance of order. Amid all these challenges, a call to change grading policies can seem particularly unrealistic. One grading practice that is

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Math-teaching Standards through text-template from the PD portion of our 9/11 Faculty meeting

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Math-teaching Standards through text-template from the PD portion of our 9/11 Faculty meeting

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Here is the math template to use with implementing the anchor standards.

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Math_Teaching Standards _ Skills Through Texts

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Teaching Standards through Text- templates from the PD portion of our 9/11 Faculty meeting

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Teaching Standards through Text- templates from the PD portion of our 9/11 Faculty meeting

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Here are the graphic organizers and templates to use with the literacy for all subjects. Implementing the anchor standards will be helpful here.

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Teaching Standards _ Skills Through Texts

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Use this to help implement the literacy standards in most subjects

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Here is a way to change up the "dares" for students. I have post its handy to stick on the larger post its.

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It is very important to put your learning objective on the board so students know what you are doing. The WHY is just as vital to get buy in. Even further...if you have something coming up that is due; the WHEN is good to add. See how mine is set up here:

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Stolen from Starbucks...I thought this was timely...

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December is a month that teachers often start to feel burn out. I am reading the book "Onward" by Elena Augilar and it feels like spa day each time enter a new chapter. Attached is a podcast on building resilience in our often emotionally draining job

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Listen to my interview with Elena Aguilar (transcript):
Sponsored by simpleshow videomaker and Screencast-O-Matic

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

When talking about a profession that loses 50 percent of its workforce in the first five years of their careers, it would be an understatement to say teaching is challenging. It traps us in small rooms with an unpredictable assortment of personalities, energies, and needs. It forces us to make hundreds of small, exhausting decisions every day. And over and over again, it puts us in predicaments that test our confidence, wear out our patience, and break our hearts. You can learn all the techniques, plan outstanding lessons, and set up a water-tight classroom management system, but to do this work and stick with it long enough to get good at it, you need a level of emotional resilience most other jobs will never require.

And at this particular moment in history, teaching may be harder than ever. Systems have been put in place that make the work seem almost impossible, and the powers that be seem to be rooting against our success. A lot can be done to change that, to make the challenges of teaching more satisfying and less...soul-sucking, but on most days it can seem like those changes are pretty far outside of our sphere of influence. Finding the courage and energy to push for change despite how hard it is? That requires resilience, too.

And our teacher training never prepares us, never teaches us exactly how to develop that resilience. In fact, in my own training, the topic of my emotional state as a teacher never came up once.

The good news is that we now have a resource that focuses entirely on the topic of teacher resilience. In her book, Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Teachers, instructional coach Elena Aguilar walks us through twelve habits that teachers can develop to strengthen their emotional resilience. The book and its companion workbook are organized around a year-long calendar; Aguilar recommends that teachers work through the book slowly.

"The workbook has over 365 exercises, many of which you'll probably want to repeat more than once," she says. "Ideally people will be engaging in this learning with friends and colleagues so that they can have the kinds of conversations that will make this learning really sink in and stick."

Let's take a peek at the 12 habits now. My hope is that in getting a better understanding of the factors that contribute to emotional resilience, you'll see areas that you can improve for yourself, and this in turn will allow you to not only stick with this incredibly important work, but find new ways to effect change, inspire others, and thrive.

12 Habits that Build Resilience

In the book, Aguilar explains how developing each of these habits contributes to resilience. She recommends focusing on a different habit each month, taking the whole month to learn about, reflect on, and develop practices that strengthen that habit. Below each habit is the month Aguilar suggests as an ideal time to focus on it: This is based on a typical American school calendar, where the school year starts around August/September and ends around May/June. If your calendar is different, you may want to make adjustments accordingly.

1. Know Yourself

Suggested month: June

Taking the time to reflect on and get clear about your values, your preferences, your skills and aptitudes, and your sociopolitical identity can help you develop a strong sense of purpose. This makes you more likely to respond to difficult situations in ways that are consistent with that purpose. "Being really anchored in your purpose," Aguilar explains, "being really clear about what you want to be doing in life, helps you deal with challenges and setbacks."

2. Understand Emotions

Suggested month: July

Emotions "can be tremendous resources and sources of energy," Aguilar says. They key is figuring out "how to have healthier relationships with them, how to understand them, name them, accept them, and then work with them." During this month, Aguilar has teachers examine the way emotions influence our thinking (and vice-versa) and how to work with them, instead of against them.

She's especially interested in how we deal with anger. "There have been times when I've acted from anger, and it hasn't been productive," she says. "And there are other times when I figured out how to use my anger as a fuel and as energy, how to act from a place of kindness and compassion, but not suppress my anger."

3. Tell Empowering Stories

Suggested month: August

"The space where we can have the greatest impact on our resilience is between a thing that happens and how we interpret and make sense of that thing," Aguilar says. That interpretation takes the form of a story we tell ourselves.

"So for example, a student rolls her eyes at you. That's the thing that happens," she says. "How you make sense of and interpret that event is precisely the point where either your resilience can be drained or filled, because you could interpret her eye rolling as This student doesn't respect me, or you can interpret that event as, This is very typical behavior from 12-year-olds, and I'm going to move on to the next part of the lesson. In that moment, if we can hone our ability to expand that space between what happens and how we respond and how we interpret it, we have so much more power then to cultivate our resilience."

4. Build Community

Suggested month: September

If we develop habits that nurture relationships with our colleagues, students, parents, and administrators, we strengthen our resilience. "There's actually medical research saying that isolation is more dangerous to your physical health than smoking," Aguilar says. "Teaching can be such a lonely experience, and I think anything that we can do to begin cementing those connections will just help us so much when things get rough." The beginning of a school year is an ideal time to start, and by putting relationship-building habits in place early, that community can be a source of strength all year long.

5. Be Here Now

Suggested month: October

"Learning how to be in the present moment without judging it can help us to experience acceptance. It helps us to have clear-headedness so that we can make choices in our responses." Developing habits of mindfulness, where we focus on what is happening right now without judgment, can help us to circumvent a "triggered" reaction to daily challenges and instead respond calmly and thoughtfully. Daily meditation or even brief moments of focusing on our breath can help us hit that "pause button" and bring ourselves to that place of calm.

6. Take Care of Yourself

Suggested month: November

"It's really hard to build community or to cultivate compassion or be a learner-some of the other habits-when you're just sick, when you're worn out," Aguilar says. So this month, she recommends focusing on the habits of physical self-care, digging into the reasons why teachers so often fall short in this area. "I think people know what to do," she says. "We know we should be eating more leafy greens and exercising more and so on, but why is it so hard?" Uncovering those reasons can help with developing habits that work.

7. Focus on the Bright Spots

Suggested month: December

During this month, Aguilar guides teachers to practice giving more attention to what is working, rather than what's not. "Our brains have a negativity bias," she explains, "so everything that is challenging, that is potentially a threat, appears really vividly and clearly to us, because of the way our brains are wired, and so one of the skills that we need to hone is the ability to see all the things that are going well or even just okay."

In the classroom, for example, we can prompt ourselves to regularly notice students who are paying attention and on-task, rather than giving all our attention to the few students who aren't. By developing this habit, we increase our sense of empowerment, which in turn builds greater resilience.

8. Cultivate Compassion

Suggested month: January

When we practice compassionate thinking for others and ourselves, we become better equipped to handle difficult situations. "Cultivating compassion, broadening our perspective on how we see a situation, helps us to empathize with others, to see the long view, to take ourselves out of the drama of the moment," Aguilar says. So when students misbehave, a colleague is short with us, or a parent challenges one of our decisions, being in the habit of viewing these situations through the lens of compassion can help you not take that behavior personally, which leads to smarter, less reactive decision-making.

9. Be a Learner

Suggested month: February

"Resilient people are curious," Aguilar says. "Resilient people experience a challenge and turn around and say, Wow. That was really hard. That pushed me to my limits. What can I learn from that? Just that question alone immediately propels you into a place of being able to build your resilience." So this month, teachers are encouraged to reflect on who they are as learners, to better understand the stages of the learning process, and to practice seeing challenges as invitations to curiosity.

10. Play and Create

Suggested month: March

One tool for building resilience that is easy to overlook is the habit of play. "I think it's a human right to be creative, to create, enjoy, and appreciate art," Aguilar says. "Playing and creating can unlock inner resources for dealing with stress, for solving problems...it can help us see different things and find different approaches to tackle challenges." This month-which may hit right around spring break-teachers are encouraged to build regular periods of play and creation into their daily lives.

11. Ride the Waves of Change

Suggested month: April

The end of the school year inevitably brings all kinds of changes; some of these can completely throw us off track if we're not prepared for them. Aguilar recommends teachers spend this month looking at "how we can harness our energies to manage those changes and also direct our energy to the places that we can make the biggest difference." This practice includes slowing down, facing and dealing with fear, and mindfully evaluating situations to determine which responses will have the most impact.

12. Celebrate and Appreciate

Suggested month: May

As the school year winds down, we have lots of opportunities to celebrate our own accomplishments and those of our students and colleagues. This month, teachers are encouraged to develop daily habits of gratitude and to carry those habits throughout the year. "Even in the hardest moments," she says, "if we can shift into a stance of appreciation, we can build our resilience."

Build the Habits Over a Year

The best way to make all 12 of these habits stick is to work through them slowly, over the course of a year. Even better, do it with a group of committed colleagues.

To support you in that journey, Elena Aguilar is offering several resources:

The Onward Workbook is the companion to the book and contains 365 daily exercises aligned with the monthly habits.

The Onward website at onwardthebook.com offers downloadable mediations, printables, a self-assessment and related blog posts and videos.

The Onward Facebook page will offer private groups for each of the 12 habits, so you can study and practice that habit within a larger community.

Come back for more.
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12 Ways Teachers Can Build their Own Resilience

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Listen to my interview with Elena Aguilar (transcript): Sponsored by simpleshow videomaker and Screencast-O-Matic This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

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Watch this award winning mini film on how important it is to keep creativity in our lives

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In my research on the habit and disposition of Onward's Chapter 10, I came across this video: How Society Kills Your Curiosity. It is such a telling example as to why we desperately need to cultivate this habit of play and creativity to help cultivate our resilience.

For those of us in education, what are we doing to bring play and creativity into our schools? After watching this video, think about how you can bring color back into our schools! Share your ideas here. Let's join together to make a difference.

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A World Without Creativity and Play - Onward

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In my research on the habit and disposition of Onward's Chapter 10, I came across this video: How Society Kills Your Curiosity. It is such a telling example as to why we desperately need to cultivate this habit of play and creativity to help cultivate our resilience.

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Watch this 4 minute video to see how imagination affects our brain

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Ever wonder what is happening in your brain when you use your imagination and are creative? I thought this was a perfect way to kick of this month's learning on the habit of play and creativity.

Growing up, we used cardboard to keep the light from coming in our bedroom windows, and then during the day these same pieces of cardboard came alive. I remember playing with them for hours creating tunnels and forts and letting our imaginations run wild. Those pieces of cardboard took on a life of their own. Obviously as a small child I didn't know what was happening in my brain as I reimagined those pieces of cardboard, but now as an adult fascinated with brains and neuroscience, I loved this video!

This 5 minute TED-Ed video, The Neuroscience of Imagination is a great illustration of what happens in your brain when you access imagination. And if you haven't explored TED-Ed videos before, check out the lesson plans that come with the video prompting you to watch, think, dig deeper, and discuss.

So go ahead and challenge your brain...what crazy image are you picturing right now?

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Ever wonder what is happening in your brain when you use your imagination and are creative? I thought this was a perfect way to kick of this month's learning on the habit of play and creativity. Growing up, we used cardboard to keep the light from coming in our bedroom windows, and then during the day these same pieces of cardboard came alive.

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How can we effectively prepare our students for what is expected at the next grade leve?

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Thought starters

1. What is the purpose of the "ins and outs" as described in the video?

2. How do these curriculum alignment efforts compare and contrast to alignment work at your school?

3. How do the ELA teams record and track their curriculum alignment efforts?

School Details

Covington Middle School
11200 Ne Rosewood Rd
Vancouver WA 98662

Data Provided By:

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Aligning Curriculum Within and Across Grades

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The English Language Arts department and grade-level teams at Covington Middle School work to vertically and horizontally align their curriculum using state and district standards. The teams' work has helped build a common curriculum.

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Students having trouble remembering what you taught them?  Have them draw

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Students having trouble remembering what you taught them?  Have them draw

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See great article on this strategy

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It's long been known that drawing something helps a person remember it. A new study shows that drawing is superior to activities such as reading or writing because it forces the person to process information in multiple ways: visually, kinesthetically, and semantically. Across a series of experiments, researchers found drawing information to be a powerful way to boost memory, increasing recall by nearly double.

Myra Fernandes, Jeffrey Wammes, and Melissa Meade are experts in the science of memory-how people encode, retain, and recall information. At the University of Waterloo, they conducted experiments to better understand how activities such as writing, looking at pictures, listening to lectures, drawing, and visualizing images affect a student's ability to remember information.

In an early experiment, they asked undergraduate students to study lists of common terms-words like truck and pear -and then either write down or illustrate those words. Shortly afterward, participants recalled 20 percent of words they had written down, but more than twice as many-45 percent-of the terms they had drawn. This experiment helped to establish the benefits of drawing.

In a follow-up experiment, the researchers compared two methods of note-taking-writing words by hand versus drawing concepts-and found drawing to be "an effective and reliable encoding strategy, far superior to writing." The researchers found that when the undergraduates visually represented science concepts like isotope and spore, their recall was nearly twice as good as when they wrote down definitions supplied by the lecturer.

Importantly, the benefits of drawing were not dependent on the students' level of artistic talent, suggesting that this strategy may work for all students, not just ones who are able to draw well.

Across a total of eight experiments, the researchers confirmed drawing to be a "reliable, replicable means of boosting performance"-it provided a significant boost to students' ability to remember what they were learning.

Why is drawing such a powerful memory tool? The researchers explain that it "requires elaboration on the meaning of the term and translating the definition to a new form (a picture)." Unlike listening to a lecture or viewing an image-activities in which students passively absorb information-drawing is active. It forces students to grapple with what they're learning and reconstruct it in a way that makes sense to them.

The researchers also suggest that drawing results in better recall because of how the information is encoded in memory. When a student draws a concept, they "must elaborate on its meaning and semantic features, engage in the actual hand movements needed for drawing (motor action), and visually inspect [the] created picture (pictorial processing)."

At a neural level, the strength of a memory depends largely on how many connections are made to other memories. An isolated piece of information-such as a trivial fact-is soon forgotten in the brain's constant effort to prune away unused knowledge. The opposite, however, is also true: The more synaptic connections a memory has, the more it resists eventually being forgotten.

So when we draw, we encode the memory in a very rich way, layering together the visual memory of the image, the kinesthetic memory of our hand drawing the image, and the semantic memory that is invoked when we engage in meaning-making. In combination, this greatly increases the likelihood that the concept being drawn will later be recalled.

This Is Not About Learning Styles

It would be a mistake to think that drawing is beneficial because it taps into a particular learning style. Research has debunked the idea that students learn best when teachers try to match instruction to a single modality.

Instead, what's happening is that drawing taps into multiple modalities-visual, kinesthetic, and semantic-which is superior to tapping into only one. When students draw something, they process it in three different ways, in effect learning it three times over.

In the Classroom

There are several ways that teachers can incorporate drawing to enrich learning.

Student-created learning aids: Instead of buying or printing posters that reinforce learning-maps, anchor charts, or diagrams-have students create them.

Interactive notebooks: Don't let students take notes verbatim-push them to be creative. One side of their notebooks can be used for written notes, the other for drawings, diagrams, and charts.

Data visualization: Asking students to collect, analyze, and present data in visual form can deepen their understanding of a topic. Examples include visualizing concepts in math, analyzing classical literature, and exploring fractals.

Bookmaking: Blending academics and art, students at Symonds Elementary create their own books to visually represent topics in subjects ranging from science to English language arts. Students can also create comics books to tell stories or describe events.

Assessing learning through art: Jill Fletcher, a middle school teacher in Hawaii, uses "one-pagers" to challenge students to show their understanding about a topic through art, making it less about finding the "single correct answer" and more about crafting a response they can stand behind. And students at Normal Park Museum Magnet School create travel journals as a visible record of their learning.

The takeaway: Encourage students to draw. Doing so is a powerful tool to boost student learning because it improves recall by challenging students to explore an idea in different ways.

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It's long been known that drawing something helps a person remember it. A new study shows that drawing is superior to activities such as reading or writing because it forces the person to process information in multiple ways: visually, kinesthetically, and semantically.

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Building resilience is about knowing what we can influence and what we respond to

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As Elena Aguilar shares in Chapter 7 of Onward: In order to build resilience, you must feel the ability to respond to challenges lies within you. She goes on to share 7 ways to cultivate your own sense of power. We shared last week about the first two ways in the blog Cultivating Your Own Sense of Power and today we are going to look at number 4 on the list: When you encounter a challenge, or when you stumble and fall, ask yourself, Is it within my influence or control to do something about this challenge? If you answer yes, then you'll cultivate your own power.

This idea of uncovering what is in your influence or control is foundational in Transformational Coaching, especially when clients need to feel empowered. As a visual learner, I often use Elena's Spheres of Influence tool in a coaching session in order to guide my client to a more empowering space. Elena's Spheres of Control blog on EdWeek will help guide you through this resource as well as give you some examples of what this sounds like in a coaching session.

So empowering to shift your focus away from things that are beyond your control to things that you can influence and control.

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As Elena Aguilar shares in Chapter 7 of Onward: In order to build resilience, you must feel the ability to respond to challenges lies within you. She goes on to share 7 ways to cultivate your own sense of power.

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Easy way to know if kids got it or not

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Teachers at Eastern Senior High School in Washington, DC, use a quick written worksheet at the start of each class period to keep tabs on students' content understanding, academic progress, and social and emotional needs.

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Teachers at Eastern Senior High School in Washington, DC, use a quick written worksheet at the start of each class period to keep tabs on students' content understanding, academic progress, and social and emotional needs.

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Need help to get out of the Feb/Mar. blues? get curious...

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The disposition that we are exploring in February is curiosity. It is a disposition that makes us want to investigate, listen, ask questions, and take risks.

In Chapter 9 of Onward, Elena Aguilar shares the many benefits of curiosity: It helps us see with fresh eyes and access more of our brain for problem solving: it naturally reduces our fear and can help us break out of old, unhealthy behaviors; it can make us literally feel good - triggering our brain to release dopamine. Dopamine, a natural opiate, also plays a role in enhancing the connections between cells that are involved in learning.

So how can we help foster this disposition? Elena shares this activity Ask a Question in The Onward Workbook. It is a simple morning meditation to help you anchor yourself in curiosity. Set your timer for 3-5 minutes. Simply sit quietly, close your eyes, take a few slow breaths, and ask a question that you want answers to or are working on. Elena shares some of the questions that she has asked:

How can I be more patient with ________ (particular student to colleague)?

How can I notice the bright spots in today?

Where can I find joy in teaching today?

How do I know I'm right for the job?

Then sit quietly and see where your mind takes you. Every so often, or whenever you need to re-anchor in curiosity, repeat the question to yourself.

Try this tomorrow and reflect on what insights you have as you go through your day.

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The disposition that we are exploring in February is curiosity. It is a disposition that makes us want to investigate, listen, ask questions, and take risks.

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This month and next are most challenging to stay motivated. Click here for support and great tips

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Onward: Stories and Resources to Cultivate Emotional Resilience

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Your first stop for resources, inspiration, and guidance on cultivating emotional resilience. The perfect site for anyone who is feeling burned-out and beat-down. Don't just survive. Thrive with Onward.

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Great article with tangible lessons that are simple to fulfill the literacy standard in ALL SUBJECTS

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Students in my freshman English class have incredible stories to tell, but they aren't always eager to share them.

A quick scan of the room makes it easy to understand why. One student, Johnny, is a talented artist but reads and writes well below grade level. His catchphrase is "Oh, writing isn't my thing." Johnny's discussion partner David moved to the U.S. two years ago and has been developing his English language skills over time, but is repeating the course after struggling through it last year-and his confidence is shattered. Seated behind them is Sara, who has attended four schools in the past two years and hasn't established relationships at our school yet. Her partner Jasmine, has a college-level vocabulary, but gets bored quickly and often tunes out.

Building a classroom community in which all students feel valued and respected, and creating a learning space where everyone feels safe openly sharing their stories will take a lot of work. We need low-stakes, shareable writing assignments to break the ice, so I use micro-writing exercises as often as possible.

Many different types of teachers use micro-writing in their classrooms to build a diverse range of skills and to check for understanding. A math teacher might ask students to describe the difference between mean and median in one sentence, while a science teacher might ask students observe a diagram of the water table and describe how it would look during a drought in less than 20 words. These assignments are efficient and have many academic benefits. They're also easy to share, and when students start talking to one another about what they write, the value of micro-writing goes beyond academics, addressing social and emotional needs like self-perception and confidence.

In my classes, micro-writing assignments help students develop and strengthen their identities. In a room full of reluctant writers, I can sense tangible fear of a blank page even after I assure my students that their papers won't be graded. Many of them believe they can't write a "good" essay and they are hesitant to even try-but everyone can write one great sentence, and a sentence is where it all starts.

When I begin a micro-writing activity, I intentionally send signals to students that it's not about quantity. Recently, I gave them sticky notes instead of notebook paper, assigned a 10-word limit and asked them to write a sentence about someone they consider a hero. We're preparing to read Homer's Odyssey, and I wanted them to consider the characteristics of modern-day heroes so that later, we can discuss how Odysseus measures up. A few minutes later I asked students to share their answers with a partner, then I read my own sentence aloud to the whole group and invited others to do the same.

After an awkward pause, a few kids began to share-all of them named their parents and none of them offered an explanation. Then Johnny, who is often distracted and struggles to finish his assignments, raised his hand.

"My grandma's a hero because she does what my mom can't: raise me."

It was a powerful sentence and it resonated with his peers. A few classmates followed his lead, mentioning their own grandparents and siblings, and sharing details big and small about their personal heroes. It turned out that a lot of people in the room were being raised by someone other than their mom or dad.

The connections that emerge as students share their writing are key to building community. This particular moment provided evidence of Johnny's ability to make meaningful connections, demonstrate vulnerability and show leadership in front of his peers, just by sharing what he wrote.

We had a good discussion that day, but what happened during that class period isn't always how it goes. Sharing can take many different forms. Students can post their answers in assigned locations in the room and reveal their opinions and experiences without saying a word. They can also share their thoughts and comment on their peers' work online using a bulletin board app like Padlet.

No matter the medium or sharing strategy, it's essential that micro-writing assignments are quick, focused on improvement (not mastery) and easy to celebrate. Three of my favorites are:

1. Six Word Compositions: There's something magical about about telling a story in six words. It's enough to ensure students say something meaningful, yet short enough that everyone can do it in a few minutes. I'm able to offer support to students who get stuck like reminding them that they only need to make one point or helping them verbalize an answer and then transcribing it on paper. I can challenge my advanced students by carving out time for feedback and revisions so they can add more details or manipulate the tone.

This fall, my freshmen wrote six words about how their first day of school was going, then posted it on the board underneath a thumbs up, down or in the middle icon.

2. 3-2-1s: Micro-writing doesn't have to focus on sentences and paragraphs. Lists are great tools to help students summarize, analyze and evaluate information on the fly. As a warm-up, my class recently wrote down three things they didn't do over the weekend, two people they trust and one difficult decision they've made at some point in their lives.

We circled up and shared one of the things we didn't do over the weekend as a starting point to help check for understanding and students get comfortable speaking to an audience before diving into the more difficult topics (students had the option to "pass" when it got to more personal elements of the list).

3. Sentence Starters: Sometimes finishing someone else's sentence is easier than starting your own. Providing a sentence starter that students can end with their own words can jumpstart reluctant writers. One way I use them is to help students respond to dialogue between characters in a book. After we read a chapter, we revisit an important passage and respond to prompts like "This makes me think about ______________."

Once students fill in the blank, they can share their responses silently by trading papers, reading their partner's sentence and then finishing another prompt like "I like that my partner ________________." We often trade papers several times and progress to more open-ended prompts It's a great way to get them to re-read parts of a text and to respond to their classmate's writing. When students get their own papers back they read the responses to their first sentence and often recognize common experiences and ideas.

Creating a classroom community where students feel comfortable enough to share their stories, even when they know their storytelling and writing skills are still developing, takes work. There isn't one singular strategy that makes it happen, but micro-writing can play a large role, and not just from a social-emotional standpoint. It can lead to academic gains, too. What begins as a few words can grow into a few sentences, then a paragraph, and eventually multiple paragraphs or pages. And as each student's stamina and confidence grows, and they find their voice, I often see improvement in style, organization, tone, grammar and punctuation.

While I love to see this kind of growth in writing, the most powerful part of short, frequent, shareable micro-writing assignments is that they can support identity development, help all levels of writers build a sense of belonging and help teachers and students create strong classroom communities.

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Micro-Writing is Having a Macro Impact on Identity Development - EdSurge News

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Students in my freshman English class have incredible stories to tell, but they aren't always eager to share them. A quick scan of the room makes it easy to understand why. One student, Johnny, is a talented artist but reads and writes well below grade level. His catchphrase is "Oh, writing isn't my thing."

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Neurosciences have proven that working with strengths can actually improve negative behaviors

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As we start this month with the December habit: Focus on the Bright Spots, here is a little motivation for focusing on this habit: This is an extensively researched approach in psychology, organizational change management, and neuroscience - and researchers in all these fields agree that focusing on the positive not only feels good but also works when you're trying to change or you want others to change.

This short video by Dan Heath is just the motivation you will need to start this month of in search of the bright spots for positive change.

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As we start this month with the December habit: Focus on the Bright Spots, here is a little motivation for focusing on this habit: This is an extensively researched approach in psychology, organizational change management, and neuroscience - and researchers in all these fields agree that focusing on the positive not only feels good but also works when you're trying to change or you want others to change.

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Tangible example for how to use Standardized Grading

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Tangible example for how to use Standardized Grading

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Article on Mindfulness in the classroom. Calm App creator is quoted

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Article on Mindfulness in the classroom. Calm App creator is quoted

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Teachers benefit just as much as students.

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Walk into any busy classroom and you may feel like you've entered a tornado. Kids talking, teachers trying to get through content while navigating different requests, and the inevitable interruptions. When trying to manage the chaos, sometimes the most helpful thing is to just slow down. Instead of turning to quick fixes, many teachers are using mindfulness as a way for students to reset. Mindfulness restores a sense of calm in the classroom by helping students develop inner peace.

But mindfulness does much more than just create a positive classroom culture. Some of the purported benefits of mindfulness include decreasing stress and anxiety, improving self-esteem and self-regulation, and increasing calm. Teachers across the country have been bringing mindfulness into their classrooms, hoping that their students see some of these benefits.

To support teachers, organizations like Mindful Schools and MindUp provide mindfulness lessons and training. They have been met with an eager audience. Tori Dahlberg, a 4th-grade teacher at Innovations Academy in San Diego uses an app called Calm to teach her students about mindfulness and meditation. Dahlberg says, "Our school implemented mindfulness as part of our social and emotional curriculum about four years ago and since then, we've noticed that kids are much better able to regulate themselves." The self-regulation skills that Dahlberg refers to include the ability to focus, control emotions, and to be flexible.

Dahlberg credits Calm with much of her success teaching mindfulness in the classroom. Since their launch in 2012, Calm has become the number one app for meditation, relaxation and sleep, with 32 million downloads and 75,000 new users per day. Calm is on a mission to bring mindfulness into classrooms across the world, offering every K-12 teacher a free Calm Premium subscription. Currently, they have over 54,000 teachers signed up, with a goal of onboarding 100,000 in the coming year. Through the program, teachers have access to guided meditations, Sleep Stories, soothing nature scenes, music, and a Calm Kids section, with meditation sessions developed for specific age groups. (Interested teachers can sign up for the program here.)

But mindfulness isn't just beneficial for students, it can also be a great way for teachers to destress. As Tamara Levitt, Head of Mindfulness for Calm says, "With teachers, learning mindfulness skills enables them to teach with greater patience and presence. They respond more skillfully to the needs of individual students as well as the larger group, ultimately creating a more positive learning environment for everyone." By incorporating mindfulness into the classroom, teachers not only get tools to help their students but also to help themselves.

When teachers practice mindfulness, they get to reap the benefits while simultaneously becoming better mindfulness teachers. By practicing mindfulness in their personal lives, teachers are better equipped to encourage and help their students develop their own practices. To see the most success with mindfulness, all key players need to be bought into the process. Though the classroom chaos may still remain, mindfulness helps both students and teachers find clarity and calmness.

Lily Jones covers innovative educators and the companies that cater to them. She also runs two innovative companies of her own: CuriosityPack.com and EducatorForever.com. Follow her on Twitter @educatorlily.

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Destress The Classroom: Bringing Mindfulness To Students And Teachers

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Some of the purported benefits of mindfulness include decreasing stress and anxiety, improving self-esteem and self-regulation, and increasing calm. Teachers across the country have been bringing mindfulness into their classrooms, hoping that their students see some of these benefits.

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Simply press the play button to experience mindfulness for you or students here.

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Below are a collection of recorded meditations, described in the book and provided here for download for free. For a full explanation of these...

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Want to reduce student anxiety? Create a positive tone in your classroom? Gain control of your own emotions? Try the Calm app. It is free to teachers...

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Join 250,000+ teachers bringing mindfulness to the next generation

Join the movement

"If every 8 year old is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation."

- Dalai Lama

Discover what's possible if every school day began with a few moments of mindfulness. Together let's equip students with tools for resilience, self-care, and stress management.

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Age-specific resources to help you bring mindfulness into the classroom

A self-care guide to support you during the school day and beyond

A free sampling of meditations, music, Sleep Stories, breathing exercises and more

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Just as we put on our oxygen mask first, we can best support the health and happiness of others by taking care of ourselves first.

Meditate regulary to reduce stress, prevent burnout and improve your relationships with students, parents and colleagues.

Listen to Calm Music and Sleep Stories at the end of a busy day to help you wind down and fall asleep with ease.

Start today

Lauren Daly Clark

@msdalyLST

When given a choice today, this kiddo wanted to hear more from @KingJames himself on "managing emotions". Thank you @calm for opening this door for us. This was truly a special moment today ❤️✨

Miss Epstein

@MissEEpstein

I often use @calm during writing sessions at school. There are lots of relaxing instrumentals that help my children to focus (they also know that if I can't hear my music, they're too loud). They love it. Today I'm using it as relaxing background noise whilst reading. 😌

Feeling stressed or anxious? I encourage you to take time to breathe and meditate. @calm is a wonderful resource that I've used by myself and with students for years. Free for educators. #meditate

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Join 250,000+ teachers bringing mindfulness to the next generation.

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Want to motivate your students based on their level of thinking?  Read this engaging book on the younger, misunderstood generation

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Get the scoop on Mark's best-selling book!

View Free Chapter
Order Now
Answering Why: Unleashing Passion, Purpose, and Performance in Younger Generations is based on Mark's work with educational organizations and businesses across North America, alongside his personal experience as the father of two Millennials. As a strategic consultant, he delivers many keynote speeches each year and coaches his clients on recruiting, retaining, and motivating the younger generations to greater performance in their educational programs and careers. Through this new book, you can experience the power of these strategies for the challenges and opportunities presented by today's younger generations. Find out more below!

What is Answering Why about?

The Why Generation is a term Mark coined to encompass both Generations Y (the Millennials) and Z (currently the youngest generation). These generations, together more than 100 million strong, are approaching their education, careers, and everything else in their lives with a strong desire to understand the purpose behind what they do. "Because I said so" is not enough of a reason anymore, and we are feeling this shift in the classroom dynamic, in our workplace interactions, and in every conversation we have with today's young people. The Why Generation is asking a genuine question. And this book was written to help us answer it. From the urgent skills gap crisis to the proven strategies to motivate and inspire our young people, this book will address the burning questions faced by educators, employers, and parents across the country.

In Answering Why, Mark C. Perna shares his wide experience and profound success as both a single dad and performance consultant for schools and business across the country. Mark's mission is to empower individuals, educators, employers, and parents to embrace the branch-creak crisis moments of life and make a meaningful connection with the young people they influence. This best-selling book will help unlock the incredible potential of young people everywhere and spur them to increased performance on all fronts, so they can make a bigger difference-which is exactly what they want.

Who should read Answering Why?

More than 100 million Americans are part of the Y and Z Generations, and there are another 220 million Americans who interact with them daily as their employers, educators, and parents. Unlike many generational gurus, Mark actually believes in the incredible potential of our younger generations. All we have to do is unlock it. That's why the insights and strategies of Answering Why: Unleashing Passion, Purpose, and Performance in Younger Generations will make the difference.

Are you an education professional?If so, you interact with Generations Y and Z daily-and you know the struggle to understand what makes today's young people tick. Packed with perspectives from your colleagues around the country, Answering Why will help you implement strategies to inspire your students to perform at a higher level. Everyone in the world of education can benefit from these tools, including administrators, teachers, guidance counselors, and support staff in:

middle schools

high schools

career and technical centers

postsecondary training facilities

technical and community colleges

universities

Are you an employer? Employers in all industries are facing serious labor shortages as the skills gap in America continues to expand. You need to recruit and retain the talented, skilled workers who will help your businesses compete on the global stage. That's why this book is for you: filled with real-world examples and interviews, it offers invaluable insights on how business and industry groups can make the most of their relationships with Generations Y and Z, driving recruitment and retention success stories.

Are you a parent? You are not alone; there are over 100 million younger-generation sons and daughters in our country today and their parents face struggles similar to what you may be facing. Mark experienced them himself as a single dad and his book will reveal what worked in his family. It's a universal desire to help our kids become self-reliant and independent in this ever-changing world that has become considerably more competitive.

Whatever your connection with the younger generations, this book will help you look at yourself and the younger generations from numerous vantage points. You will:

Gain the skills to unleash their vast strengths

Understand their sometimes-frustrating differences

Appreciate the astonishing nuances that make them unique, special, and important in this new economy

What questions does Answering Why answer?

If you've ever asked any of the following questions, Answering Why is for you!

1. What can we do to reach today's young people and motivate them to higher performance in all areas of life?

2. Why are the younger generations the way they are?

3. How do generational differences affect the workplace?

4. Are the younger generations really so unmotivated and entitled as they're stereotyped to be?

5. Why is parenting today different from previous times, and how can I do it successfully?

6. Why are the crisis moments of life the catalyst for change?

7. How is the educational paradigm changing in America?

8. How can we improve employee retention and performance?

9. How can we close the skills gap?

What's the story behind Answering Why?

Mark says, "I was inspired to write Answering Why because so many people around the country are asking that very question: why? Why are we struggling more than ever before to connect with those in generations older or younger than our own? Why are our education and workforce development systems broken? Why is the skills gap expanding in our country, with no easy solution in sight?

As a longtime consultant in the related fields of education and workforce development, I believe there is no more urgent moment than now to start solving these challenges facing our nation. There are millions of unfilled jobs in America because employers can't find workers with the right skills to fill them-and yet there are millions of people un- or underemployed. This skills gap will soon reach crisis proportions as the industries that drive our economy forward falter for lack of skilled people. And we can change this when we start answering the essential question of why.

But even more than that, I wrote this book because I see the urgency for educators, employers, and parents to reach the younger generations. I've felt this urgency myself as a father to two amazing young men. I believe we can empower today's younger generations to make a bigger difference than ever before. And if the strategies and stories of the work I do can help generations of young people reach their full potential, then together we've changed the world for the better."

Why this book? Why now?

The message of Answering Why has never been more critical and timely. Generational divides are nothing new, but what is new is the alarming rate at which our country's skills gap and college debt burden are expanding. While there are many factors at play in this crisis, many experts believe that the radical differences between today's younger and older generations are among the most significant causes. Business and industry's desperation for skilled workers has its roots in our educational system and even in our parenting, due to the societal forces that have shaped today's young people and their view of themselves, their opportunities, and the world.

We face a national epidemic of rising college costs, fewer degreed job openings, and employer frustration with the younger generations in the workplace. The career-ready emphasis of recent legislation underscores the seriousness of the education and skills gap problem in the United States. Answering Why addresses these challenges and more through the author's comprehensive knowledge and proven strategies, pioneered over the course of a career devoted to education and workforce development.
View Free Chapter Order Now

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Answering Why | Mark Perna - Keynote Speaker

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View Free Chapter Order Now Answering Why: Unleashing Passion, Purpose, and Performance in Younger Generations is based on Mark's work with educational organizations and businesses across North America, alongside his personal experience as the father of two Millennials.

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Here's a great website, you have heard of, register for free access to hundreds of units, lessons, videos and printables.

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Enter your username and password to log into the Smarter Balanced applications. After you log in, you will automatically be directed to the application you selected.

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Here is one way to allow your class to create affirmations.  I have a jar in my class so they  can fold the paper and put them into, so I can review, and deliver to the recipient.  Here are two on one page so you can use a half sheet.  It is editable, so please make a copy first!

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Here is an alternative idea to grouping students. Notice the handy supply storage.

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Formative Assessments with free printable scanner codes for the students

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Formative Assessments with free printable scanner codes for the students

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Plickers is a great site to assess student knowledge and get grading reports while not needing a tech device for students. Check it out here

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You might love this website already. If you have not seen or used it, check out "Share My Lesson.com" where educators post lessons with supporting details and resources for you to download and use. Some include powerpoint slides and additional links to other lessons supporting the same subject, topic, and/or standard. This month features a"Stop the Hate" WEBINAR teachers can view all about the lessons learned from Charlottesville, and many related topics in the field of History & Social Studies. Many webinars offered on this site may support teachers' personalized PD! It's very simple to sign up with your email address for free!

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Created and maintained by the American Federation of Teachers, Share My Lesson is a community of teachers, paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, specialized instructional support personnel, higher education faculty, and parents and caregivers who contribute content, collaborate, and stay up to date on the issues that matter to students and educators everywhere.

Sign up to receive our newsletter.

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Share My Lesson | Free Lesson Plans & Teacher Resources

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Share My Lesson is a community of teachers, paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, specialized instructional support personnel, higher education faculty, and parents and caregivers who contribute content, collaborate, and stay up to date on the issues that matter to students and educators everywhere.

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Here's a new twist to Socratic Seminars, causing students to think more critically and "go deeper" in their discussions and responses to what they learn from the text.

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Listen to my interview with Marisa Thompson (transcript):
Sponsored by Peergrade and 3Doodler

Check out information about Marisa Thompson's Ultimate TQE Course at the bottom of this page!

So much of the learning we do comes from texts: articles, textbooks, novels, and all kinds of online publications. Sometimes, those texts come in less traditional forms; in fact, our use of the word "text" has broadened over time to include things like films, images, and even diagrams. Regardless of what form they come in, texts make up the bulk of how our students experience learning.

But too often, when we assign texts to students, we find that they don't experience them with much depth. One reason for that may be that we don't set them up to do that. In many text-based classes (English, history, science), the learning cycle often consists of (1) consuming a section of the text, (2) answering teacher-created questions about the text, (3) taking a test after several sections have been completed.

For years, high school English teacher Marisa Thompson followed this same programming, and got typical results: Some students did the required work, but never seemed particularly invested in the books themselves. Others completed the questions unevenly, sometimes not answering them all, other times copying work from their peers. And when students didn't do the work, they got calls home and office referrals.

As this pattern repeated itself year after year, Thompson became more frustrated: The texts themselves were wonderful, but students weren't experiencing them the way they were meant to be experienced. Instead, they had shallow interactions with them, doing whatever surface work had to be done to get a grade.

Finally, she started experimenting with a different approach, and the way she teaches texts now is completely different from the way she used to. Her current approach, which she calls TQE, is similar to Socratic Seminar, where students lead a discussion on a given text, but with a few twists. Since implementing this new approach, Thompson has seen her students reading much more than they used to, and with much more depth than ever before. They are having college-level conversations about books in class, and for the first time, they seem excited about the books they're reading.

On top of that, Thompson's prepping and grading work for these class sessions is down to almost nothing.

What I love about this method, and why I'm sharing it here, is that I think it could be applied in a lot of different areas, not just with the study of novels. In any class where students need to read a text in order to learn, something along these lines could be implemented, and I think you'll find that the learning in your classroom gets much richer as a result. So as you read about TQE, think about how you might be able to apply it in your content area.

The Problem

As an English teacher, Thompson found that her students were experiencing books in a very shallow, grade-focused way.

"(I would) send students home, maybe get them started on Chapter 1, and then, Hey guys, go home and read Chapter 2. Come on back and we'll talk about it, and here's your list of questions; you're going to have a reading quiz. I realized I wasn't really assessing their reading with homework and quizzes. I was assessing whether or not they did their homework questions."

This method not only diminished the value of the books students were reading, it also led to other problems. "It made reading seem like a hassle," Thomspon says. "I started getting a bunch of cheating. One year I had 10 kids copy off each other. It turned this amazing story-this beautiful novel that everybody should read and enjoy and love-into a discipline problem."

Early Changes

Knowing something had to change, Thompson decided to try grading students only on whether their participation in class indicated that they had read the book.

"I said, 'Look. We're going to read this book, and we're just going to read it and talk about it. You're not going to have study questions. You're not going to have any reading quizzes. But I'm going to know if you read or not. I'm going to know.'"

These early discussions were similar to Socratic Seminar, where students came with questions and Thompson mostly observed. When a student participated in a way that demonstrated that he or she had read the book, their names would be crossed off of a chart. "And that was it," Thompson says. "The standard says, Be able to read and analyze at grade level. And if they're doing that, I mean, yeah, cross their name off. Move on."

For students who scored low on the discussion or who weren't initially comfortable with active participation, Thompson offered alternative means of assessment. "I said, hey, if I'm wrong with your score, then we need to come up with some sort of alternative: They were used to taking annotations, taking notes on their thoughts while they read-you can show me those. You can sit down and have a conversation just one-on-one, or you can take a test. So if you got an eight out of 10, and you're like, 'No, I want the 10 out of 10,' I have a multiple-choice test on the book."

Most of the time, Thompson's initial score on the discussion turned out to be accurate. "I did have a lot of students who had a B for their assessment, and they're like, No, I want the A. Great. And they took the test and then it was cute, because they were like Yeah, I didn't really read all of it. So my assessment was, on average, about 3 or 4 percent higher than what they were normally getting on their tests."

Right away, Thompson started to see changes in how her students were reading. "I had students who started reading more than they were assigned, and they were finishing the book early," she says. Some were even reading ahead.

Over time, Thompson refined her approach, adding small-group time before the large-group discussions, offering scaffolding to help students develop better questions, and structuring student contributions so that the richest questions got the most discussion time.

These changes have so elevated the level of discourse that Thompson sometimes feels like she's teaching college class. "And that's exactly what I tell them: 'What we just did, that was a collegiate literature course. That was amazing. You could walk into a college course and have this discussion.' And you can see that they're enjoying it."

The TQE Method

Here is the approach Thompson uses now, step by step:

1. Students Complete Assigned Reading at Home

Usually, this will be a segment of a longer text, like a few chapters in a novel. Students who show up having not completed the reading are invited to finish up in the hall during small group discussion (step 2) to catch up. They are welcome to return to class for the discussion when they finish.

2. Small Group Discussions (15 minutes)

When they arrive in class, students get into small groups, where they have 15 minutes to share thoughts, lingering questions, and epiphanies (TQEs) they have about the reading. Early in the year, Thompson provides stems to help students generate these (see below), encouraging them to move from the more simplistic ideas on the left to the more complex ones on the right.

3. TQEs on the Board

By the time the 15 minutes is up, each group needs to choose their top 2 TQEs from the group and write them on the board. Although these are meant to serve as the basis for the group discussion, they are not necessarily used as is.

"If they put something on there that is not at the quality or as thought-provoking as we need it to be for the class to discuss, we'll edit it together, the 40 of us," Thompson explains. "So it becomes a writing lesson."

Thompson also insists that when discussing a text, students use the author's name. When discussing Of Mice and Men, for example, she started by having students repeat the name "Steinbeck" five times. "I love Lenny and George. I love Lenny," she told them. "but he's totally fictional. So when you start asking questions like, 'Why did George do that?' George doesn't exist."

Instead, she has students practice asking questions like, "Why did hat theme is Steinbeck have George do that?" "W Steinbeck trying to convey to the rest of us by having his character do that?"

"It's not about the character," she explains. "It's not about the character's motivation, it's the author's purpose in providing that motivation for the character."

4. Class Discussion of TQEs

Thompson then moderates a whole-class discussion of the reading, using the TQEs that have been written on the board. This takes about 40 minutes of class time-she teaches on a block schedule, so there's plenty of time to dig in. When the class is actively studying a novel, they will have these conversations in every class meeting.

As for grading, Thompson simply records when students participate, and that's it. "I have a chart with their little pictures," she explains, "and I cross them off as I go. So I'm not necessarily grading them every single day. My student Sally might have participated a ton one day, and skipped the next day. But my standard-based grading says she is reading and analyzing at at least grade level. I don't need to score each of my 40 kids every single day."

"And the amount of planning is nil," Thompson adds. " I'm not creating, I'm not copying, I'm not collecting, I don't need to waste my time. My prep is reading before bed every night."

What Student-Centered Learning Looks Like

"We have all these really great aphorisms, these quotes about, 'Students should own their learning,' and 'Empower students,'" Thompson observes. "And it's like, well that's great, but how in the heck do we do that?"

Since starting the TQE process, Thompson has seen true student-centered learning in action: Students are in charge of the content of the discussions, and the ability to participate fully has become its own motivator for completing the homework.

"The peer pressure of Everyone's discussing this book- that becomes cool. To have an idea, to have an opinion. So the student comes in, and all of a sudden it's, "Wait, I read that part, and I think this," you know? And you want to talk about empowering a student? You just turned that student into a part of the classroom community." ♦

If you are a fan of the TQE method and you want to take it further, check out Marisa's Ultimate TQE Course. This course will revolutionize your reading and writing instruction and assessment through student-led inquiry, intentional teacher guidance, feedback that is immediately useful to students while eliminating the need for at-home grading, even for essays, and a personable approach to teaching and learning that leaves everyone in the room energized and engaged.

Cult of Pedagogy receives a portion of the Ultimate TQE Course sales that come through the link on this page.

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Deeper Class Discussions with the TQE Method

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Want your students to have rich, complex conversations about the texts they read? This method leads to the kinds of classroom discussions you thought only happened in college.

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I am hosted the "Mindfulness in the Classroom" workshop Oct. 4 for the district PDs and conduct these meditations in my homeroom on Mondays if you ever want to come and watch, we can arrange 10 minutes of coverage for the beginning of your homeroom.