Merry Belated Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hope you guys had a great Christmas and have a happy and safe New Year!!!

Temperament Testing

Today in class (freshman academy) the students took a temperament testing called the Keirsey Sorter. The students had to answer 70 A/B answers and then it gave them a report of their personality, and learning environments. It related to some of the power tools that we learned in SURN because each report gave the student a tip for success and many of the suggestions were ideas like, "summarize the main ideas (golden lines)." "Study in groups by talking" (reciporical teaching), Write key definitions (Frayer Method). They students thought is was amazing that a test could tell them so much about themselves.

It's that time of year again...

The holidays are very stressful for everyone (parents, teachers, students) and we tend to see a lot of behavior problems around this time of year. I was out on Friday and left a very involved lesson plan with several different activities to keep them working from "bell to bell". Unfortunately my first class decided to rebel and this resulted in two fights, with the students only getting half of their work done. The rest of my classes got all of their work done, and there were no problems for the rest of the day. Of course the class that has the fights is also the class with the worst grades and lowest test scores (go figure). So what am I supposed to do? I leave them a great lesson plan (packed with literary strartegies), and they've had practice doing these types of lessons before, yet I have all of these issues. I do not need my students to fall behind when they are already struggling with getting their work done. I would love to give them extra work as punishment, but I worry that they will just refuse to do that work as well. Frustrating....
(I think we need that Christmas break in two weeks to come a little quicker so we can all recharge.)

Happy Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And go Patriots!!

First Nine Weeks

We got the results from our first nine weeks tests, and the improvements from last year were quite dramatic. Last year, our average was about 42%, this year it is about 55%. The numbers are still low, but huge improvements from last year. We used some of our lessons from last year, but the lessons in reading comprehension have to be part of the change in test scores. I hope this trend continues!

Common Plan

The fabulous Mollie turner and I and one other Earth Science teacher have utilized common planning this year and our first nine weeks scores are around 11% higher! Yes, we have to plan after school but it only takes about 20 minutes and we plan 1 week at a time. I write the lesson plans, our other teacher makes the copies, and Mollie has been creating the assessments. It seems to be working!

VAST

The VAST conference is this weekend (Nov 18-20) in Hampton, VA. Anyone going?
I hope to blog about what I learned and if you are looking for anything in particular let me know so I can be on the look out. Hope you all have a great week.

Technology

How are you using technology in your classroom? The reason I post this is that I just got this really cool document camera so I was inspired to create this post. I have used the following;

-Projector

-Youtube

-Online course (desire to learn, odyssey)

-Web quest

-Blogging

-Online SOL testing (jlab)

-Probeware (Q5+)

-Document camera (elmo)

And that is just this year. I am also developing an online oceanography course for WHRO that will go out to 18 different districts next year. It is on the D2L or desire to learn platform. Well time to work on that. Happy posting.

How are you using blogs?

Just wonder if you are blogging in your classes? Here is my blog! Feel free to critique.

http://blogs.spsk12.net/1068

The pictures are of the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii taken by my lovely wife.

Exhausted

It's Friday, and it feels like the end of a very long week. It's the end of the grading period, so we're pressed for time and probably won't have the opportunity to practice literacy strategies until after our nine weeks tests. I'm going to look for an article this weekend that we can use as a "hook" for our next unit... Geology! The students either love this unit or hate it, i.e.

"Ms. Turner...Why do we have to learn about rocks?"

I think we're going to work on "Visualizing" with this upcoming unit. There is a lot of visualization in geology, plate tectonics, etc. My students have a good handle on "Making Connections" and "Determining Important Ideas" as well as "asking Questions" because we have practiced those the most.

I am also working on incorporating humor into my lessons. We are using Marcia Tate's book "Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites" and each of us chooses a strategy to incorporate into our classes. Today I unintentionally made my students laugh when I spontaneously started singing to help them remember which ocean experiences hurricanes and which experiences typhoons. Hey, I thought I sounded good.

Just wait 'til I break out my tap dancing skills.

New Cool Ideas?

Recently I made a lab from scratch that has students place thermometers on 30 degrees north and south and the equator. Then students then aim a light at the equator and record the change in temp of all thermometers. It went well and even our fabulous Mollie Turner let her students do the lab. I had my lowest level studnets run the lab and write the report and so far i have had great results. I will email the plan to you if you want.

So any cool new labs or ideas out there?

Training. Nov. 2nd staff day

I must say people are only receptive to change when they are ready to make a change. After giving two 40 minute training sessions on "mystery word of the day," and "ABC Graffiti," some of our staff wrote poor exit tickets.

We asked the staff to write on a post it note, "how will you implement this in your classroom." Just a few sour lemons wrote, "I will never it does not show them how to work in the real world." Some just wrote "Golden Lines."

Here we are showing staff a few more tricks to put up their selves, some more strategies to teach with and just a small few did not take it seriously. It makes me wonder why they even teach.

Sorry for venting, I guess a few our our staff are not ready to change. The majority of the staff seemed ready though. I am not sure why I let those small few get to me but it does.

Making Connections/ Neuroscience

I've been reading a lot lately about neuroscience and how the brain works. It's interesting how we store information. We talked at our iTunes conference about one of the Magnificent Seven strategies, "making connections", but I didn't expect to read about it in another journal article. While I was searching for a reading selection to use for our staff development, I found an article which discusses "making connections" in depth, and how you brain stores new information alongside of things you already knwo about. It creates neuropathways linking now info to old info. The brain is fascinating to me.

I am also a track coach, and I am always reading books about current training methods. I started reading a book called "Brain Training for Runners" by Matt Fitzgerald in August. It's pretty heavy reading so it has taken me awhile to get through, but I found a few bits of info we can take to the classroom:

First, I read about a study that was done which showed that people actually remember things better when they are moving, i.e. the concept of "muscle memory". The book mentioned how football players may be unable to remember simple facts in the classroom, but they are able to remember hundreds of complex plays because they are moving while learning them. The same is true for the dozens of form drills that track athletes do every day. You can apply this to the classroom by incorporating movement into your lessons.

The second thing I thought might be useful for students is a study that was done at Harvard. There were two groups performing a typing test 12 hours apart. The first group took the first test at 10am, practiced during the day, and then took the final test at 10pm. The second group took their first test at 10pm, slept 8 hours, and then took the final test at 10am with NO practice. Guess which group performeed better?

The first group improved 5%, while the second group improved 20%! The study talks more in depth about how your brain actually "practices" tasks while you sleep. So tell your students to quit pulling all-nighters and catch some Z's!

Modified Frayer Method!

Modified the Frayer method for the vocab on Solar System and it is really working well.
Students still put the word in the middle, the put the def. in the top left corner, the location in the solar system in the top right corner, they draw a picture in the bottom left, and then they write 3 characteristics in the bottom right! They are really enjoying the definition work on this fine Monday morning!

Update and Staff Development Day #2

I've been on overload lately, and cannot believe it's mid-October. I guess that's a good thing? Classes have been good this year. We've done several lessons involving the "Magnificent Seven" and "Power Tools":

Learning Inventory
Building Community
Coding the Text
Marginalia
Golden Lines
Making Connections
KWL charts
Reciprocal Teaching
Making Predictions

We've been using the "Reading Essentials" book, which is a companion to our text. We have also used several articles, one on the scientific method and one about a new planet that has been discovered in a far-off galaxy.

Jan came for an official SURN visitation, and she said we were doing a great job. She took pictures of my Community Learning Wall. I thought my students were pretty rowdy that day, but I guess they weren't that bad after all.

We have our second staff development on November 2nd. We are splitting the eight of us into two groups, and each are responsible for a 45 minute session. Staff will rotate to each of our sessions (there is another unrelated session as well). My group will be working on Explicit Teaching. We are planning to start with an Anticipation Guide, and then we will use "Determining Important Ideas" to mark the text and complete a Mind Map. We will be using a selection about adolescent literacy, similar to one that we used at the iTunes conference. Wish us luck!

Hey it happens!

So I was giving my marginalia lesson and being observed when one of my students made the choice to act up. It was a pure embarrasment. This lead to other students misbehaving. So my point is, even if your lesson is not going as planned, make sure you keep trying as literacy is important.

We got through the lesson, but it had it's hiccups.

Mark

That has a name?!?

I teach both upper and lower classmen in my high school (upper in my oceanography class and mostly lower in my Earth Science class). I used a vocab matching activity with my freshmen and turned it into a competition (1st group to correctly match the words to the definitions win a prize (mini snickers bars)) and they just loved it. With my oceanography class we were beginning the chapter on chemistry and I decided to have them practice marginalia with a passage I had about the origins of seawater chemistry. As we were going through the passage I had to stifle a laugh as one of my students shouts from the back of the class, "this as a name?!?! I've been doing this for years and you mean to tell me it actually as a name other then taking notes???"(add a lot of attitude and body gesturing when you read that comment). It's days like this that remind me why I love teaching- the kids have a great way of making you laugh in new ways.

Vocabulary Graphic Organizer

I used some picture cards with descriptions and vocabulary words on each group of desks in my classroom and allowed students 6 minutes at each desk to discuss the picture and write the key vocabulary on the vocabulary graphic organizer. The students enjoyed the activity and defined 20+ words as they moved around the room. It made my job very easy on Friday afternoon!!

Agree with Mollie

Yesterday Mollie Defrancesco Turner and I had the opportunity to run a staff training with some of the literacy strategies we learned at the SURN conference. I would say our staff was very open and responsive to the brain based researched strategies we used. I think everyone enjoyed practicing marginalia after we modeled an example for them. I also think they liked using the graphic organizers that had them summarize, predict, question, and connecting. All staff agreed that if we can connect our students to the text it become more relevant and fun to learn. Also, 3-2-1 exit strategies were a big hit! Thanks!

Spreading the Word...

Today, we, the participants in the SURN iTune Into Literacy Program, gave out first staff development (of many) to the rest of our school. We divided into 4 groups and, in pairs, we gave an hour session to about 30 high school teachers across all content areas (120 total).

The breakdown went like this:
"Getting to Know You" Bingo
Overview of the "Magnificent 7"
Reading With Purpose: "The House" (modeling Marginalia)
"The Connection Between Math and Music" (modeling Reciprocal Teaching)
3-2-1 Exit Ticket

I admit I was a little nervous, but we all agreed that the session was well-received. I think it will take another session or two before we get through all of the major areas we want to share . I am hoping to do a whole session on "Explicit Instruction" because that was an "Aha!" moment for me in Williamsburg. I am also looking forward to sharing more of the "Power Tools" with the rest of the teachers at our school.

Well, school starts in one week, and I'll be busy working on lesson plans for the next few days. The three of us Earth Science teachers are planning to work together to incorporate the Magnificent 7 in our lessons as much as possible. I'm looking forward to a good school year!

PS- if anyone is interested in the details of our staff development please ask, and I will gladly pass it on!

Time to process...

... now that I've had time to process all the wonderful information we learned last week. I am still in awe of all the wonderful people I met and all the ideas that were shared. I'm really looking forward to applying all the different techniques we discussed. As I reflect back on the previous year, I understand why my oceanography class had such a difficult time with the project I gave them. I assumed since they were 11th and 12th graders that they already knew how to find the main ideas, summarize, and then share that knowledge with a partner. Well, we all know what happens when we "assume"! =)
Needless to say, the first of the "Magnificent 7" that I plan to teach all my classes is "Determining Important Ideas and Summarizing". As we all get ready for school to go back I pray for a restful Labor Day weekend and a productive and meaningful school year. Always remember you are never alone in this profession - help is just a click away.

Blog to begin August 19, 2010