Teach Like A Champion: What Worked

When I first told my parents that I was considering becoming a teacher and that I had started applying to grad school, they were interested but maybe on the verge of skeptical. However, when I told them that it was in lieu of becoming a whitewater kayaker professionally and moving to Asheville, NC, they became more intrigued. My dad told me one time that the only other thing that he ever wanted to be was a history teacher, however my grandfather said an engineer or the army were his options, coincidentally he wound up doing both. I did ask my dad if he regretted it. He has always told me that he doesn't regret anything because then we wouldn't be where we are now. This is a value that I hold true every day.

So, after this announcement to my parents last year, the first thing my dad gave me was a copy of Teach Like a Champion - he is the master of finding "the best resources." I had read this book prior to arriving in my program, so as we started working through from the Digital Classroom course to the Baltimore as Your Classroom course, I began recognizing elements from the work. I was less than surprised that it was our text for our seminar. Little did I know how both effective and difficult some of the strategies are, not just to implement but to be consistent. However, if I have learned anything from the past months in the classroom - consistency and ultimately predictability is absolutely key.

For the past two weeks I attempted to effectively implement some of the strategies outlined in Doug Lemov's collection Teach Like a Champion. I focused on No Opt Out, Cold Call, and Wait Time.

No Opt Out (A student is called on and does not answer, the student is then returned to for the final answer) - The first time I tried this strategy was while I was doing the class warm up everyday. I started it with a class that is very quiet when they get called on and sometimes will simply just say "I don't know" for everything, and of course that results in about two students answering everything. What a surprise. Anyways the first time I did this I think I received the closest mortal equivalent to the eyes of satan drilling through my body in a way only an eighth grade girl is capable of. But she answered. And she does nearly every time now, or at least I receive the truly confused eyes not eyes of the laser death ray. More interestingly, it created more of a class culture of helping each other find the answer to questions. I use the phrase "Can someone help him out." And then once the answer is reached, I return to the student and for the most part they then elaborate on the answer if possible.

Cold Call (Calling on a student regardless of it their hand is raised) - I found this technique both tricky and effective. There are some students who when called on are not paying attention and it becomes a refocusing tool as they scramble for a response or look to their peers for assistance. On the other hand there are many students who have answers that they are prepared to respond however for whatever reason, being shy, looking cool, not feeling like raising a hand, then have the opportunity to answer and let their voice be heard in the classroom. I believe that this technique was familiar to the students because their science teacher also uses this technique both straight and through the use of popsicle sticks with the students names on them. He says "I am drawing an opportunity."

Wait Time (Delaying a few seconds after asking a question to give students a moment to think) - I believe that this was the most important technique to use with students because it gives the students who are eager to answer a moment to actually think of what they want to say other than just that they want to answer, you know the flailing hand waving type, and it gives the students who need time to process a moment to work through the question. I found it very important to use care with this when coupling it with Cold Call because I did not like it when I knew I caught a student who was still working out their thoughts. This really resonated with me because as a kid I would not talk in class because of this very thing, it is something that I still have issues with.

Conveniently enough I received comments from my university observer that I was using these strategies well and that she specifically noticed me use them during one of my observations. That definitely made me aware of their effectiveness. Additionally, for the students the use of these strategies has made an impact in their understanding of the expectations for the class. They have demonstrated their understanding by being much more inclined to be on their toes and paying attention during the warm-up and I have definitely seen a substantial increase in the number of hands raised.

Oh, and the Death Star has not been present in the classroom in a while.

Day Two of a week of lessons for 8th Grade

Content Focus: Louis Sacher’s Holes
Topic Focus: The Influence of Character and Setting on Plot Development
Standard Focus: 7.3.A.3.f - Analyze the actions of characters that serve to advance the plot.

Essential Question: How do multiple plot lines affect the flow of a novel?

Source for Lesson: Sacher, Louis. Holes.  Random House Inc., New York: 1998.

Objective -  Students will be able to identify critical plot points and explain in detail how the actions of the characters effected the movement of the plot of Chapter Seven in the novel Holes.

This lesson had too many pages of work to do for one ninety minute class period. However, because of the fact that the library was closed today for the book fair, I was able to give it to the students for an extra forty-five minute period. I gave the students the option to work on the packet or to do a different activity and they chose to do the packet so that we would have the computers the next day. All students except for one were not able to finish the packet, this may have been due to the distraction of group work, or the student’s own drive to finish.
Three things that went well:

• The students were repeatedly drilled on how to pull main ideas out of text and then summarize that information successfully.
• The students were able to have a more immersive understanding of the text.
• The students were prepped for future activities with the text where we will be reading selections of the text as a class that they had already read for homework.
• This assignment will be saved and used for the ARP as a writing assignment before intervention.

Three things that could be improved:

• The packet of work was too large and was overwhelming to the students. The activity would have been more beneficial if I had only used one or two sections of text for each plot line to compare. This would have enabled students to get more into the interactions of the plot rather than into the interactions of main ideas and plot points.  
• I somehow managed to turn off spell check on my computer so there were about 500000000 mistakes in the text of the story. This turned into an editing activity as well and the students circled or corrected the many mistakes in the worksheets. This turned out to be both good and bad.
• My time understanding needs to be improved because I am having trouble differentiating between the amount of work that I could do in a time frame and the amount of work my students can do in a time frame. I think that I have figured the correlation to be a 3:1 ratio and I will test this as a model on next week’s lessons.

Reflection from first day of a week of lessons for 8th Grade

Content Focus: Louis Sacher’s Holes
Topic Focus: Understanding Web Learning Interfaces and Sourcing from the Text
Standard Focus: 7.1.E.4.b Identify and explain information directly stated in the text.
  7.1.E.4.c Draw inferences and/or conclusions and make generalizations.

Essential Question: How can I interact with our digital classroom? How can I use information from a text to justify and support my generalizations and opinions?

Source for Lesson: Sacher, Louis. Holes.  Random House Inc., New York: 1998.

Objective -  Students will gain a familiarity with the technology that will be used in the classroom. Students will be able to use information directly stated in the text to form opinions, make generalizations, and draw conclusions based on the text.

REFLECTION:

The lesson today did not reach the completion level that I expected.There were several issues involving the computer logins and Google thinking that we were spamming them due to the high volume of accounts that were being made all at the same time. Additionally, the lesson was rather ambitious due to the fact that I am still learning how much to plan per day and am underestimating the amount of time that it takes to complete different tasks as a whole class. However, I think that I learned several things about the way these kind of things will and can confuse students. I think that in many cases, it was difficult for the students to translate the information presented on the projector at the front of the room to their own screen. It was also difficult for students to jump between the lionslanguageartsppcs blog homepage where the instructions were written out and other windows. It is important to incorporate the idea of opening two windows side by side to the students.  

Three aspects that went well:

• The students were excited when they came in and many wanted to check that we were still using the computers and expressed excitement to know that we were.
• The students, confused or not, were engaged.
• I did not feel upset that things went not as well as I had hoped. Mrs. Shaw has really shown me and encouraged me that even if something seems like it will never work, through dedication and repetition of process things will succeed. I think that is an invaluable lesson that I am very fortunate to have been exposed to so early in my internship.

Three aspects to change:

• Tomorrow, I think that while the students are working independently in their groups, it would be beneficial to call them up one or two at a time to one of the teachers’ computers and walk them through the process of creating an account if they were unable to do it for homework. I believe that vocal mass confusion exacerbated the confusion of the group as a whole.
• It might have been a better idea to make the Google Accounts for the students ahead of time and then allowed them to change their password, this might have prevented the Google override that made it so we could no longer make more accounts at the time of our class.
• Because we have so many adults that come to work with this class (between 4and 6 on any given day), next time we are doing an account login of some kind or introduce a new procedure, I think that moving into group tables and having a worksheet outlined for the adult to walk a small group of three to four students through the process would be much more beneficial than having all attention focused on the board and increasing the confusion.

Lesson Plan Formats: UGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

After my university supervisor came and observed me I realized I had one major thing that I really needed to work on at this point.

MY LESSON PLAN FORMAT SUCKS AND IS SUPER CONFUSING!

I am an English Major. I am a Writer. I have to write everything out in a narrative and paragraph style. That does not work for other people. And that is not a clear way to concisely explain to others what I am intending to do in a lesson. I really wanted something to still write things out in a narrative, but it was suggested that I use a format that is more visual and has bullet points of important information. In classes I have been given chart type lesson plans and that is what my co-teacher uses, however that is a format that I look at and I get confused and frustrated with so I know that I am not a chart person.

So what do I do?! Duh. I went to my favorite trusty place - Google Document Template Database. I found a huge amount of different styles of lesson plan templates and a huge database of teacher designed materials that is easily searchable. I went through about thirty different ones, opened them all up in mini-windows on my desktop and eliminated them one by one. The one that I now use has bullets, distinct visual section breaks, and still allows for my narrative style to be used. Additionally, it has a specific section for teacher reflection which I really like because it ensures that I really think about how every lesson went and make notes for the next time that I use the material.

Aren't we fortunate to live in the digital age when we have these type of resources.

A Reason to not Break

Last night I went to sleep crying. This morning I woke up and started crying. Then I made it halfway to school before I started crying. And I was crying because I was trying to think of every possible way to get out of this, to not have to go to this school ever again, because there is some ingrained complex I have that if you can escape it, it has to be better on the other side. The other side is what or of what or where, I do not know. And I was crying because I do not disappoint people, I do not do things wrong, or I have not been in the position in a long time where I could be doing something wrong, because there hasn't been anyone to tell me that I am doing something wrong.

Then as I was sitting at the desk in the back of the room before class started, the door opened, and all those loud kids with all their shirts messed up and yelling about their weekend and sheepishly turning in their projects to the back of the room, face down or up and talking about how they don't like how their project looks. And I couldn't help but smile, and remember that this is about the students. And they are fun, and with all of their idiosyncrasies, they make me happy and they make me have a reason to be driven. Their spirit is a reason not to break, even when you feel broken.

And I was crying because it didn't seem worth it, and I'm still waiting for it to be mentally worth it, at least being here. But, at least there is a reason, a reason that is more important than anything else.

Science Leadership Academy Adventure with @TeachPaperless and @ChrisLehmann

Yesterday my cohort group was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Philadelphia to the Science Leadership Academy to visit the school and speak with it's principal Chris Lehmann. It was amazing. I have several things to say about it, but I will save that for a more articulated post. However, I thought it might be interesting to share my notes and observations on the day.

Assignment for the Day: Select several questions you have about the school or the environment that creates/created the school and then record your observations and look-fors related to your questions.

Core Values: inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, reflection

SPECIFIC NOTES:

• What if high school wasn't preparation for the real world what if it was the real world?

• It's not about the courses it's about the process learned, learning how to adapt and interact with your environment.

• Wednesday breakdown at 1:00 so two hoirs for the following. Freshmen go to the Franklin Institute to take classes with scientists.  Sophomores and Juniors have ILP individualized learning plans where they are interns in the city. Seniors have year long projects. Teachers have PD.

• Twice a week students go to their advisor meetings, they have the same advisor for all four years. -purpose seems to be to write an involved college recommendation letter and so that the student has a specific point of contact for the whole time.
• Try to make it very hard for this to be a place where students want to be. It shoud be the best eight hours of their day because you don't know what they are going back to or sometimes you do know and you want to make them want to be here. Why will SLA be a better place because you came here - is one of the questions they ask students when they apply for their interview. 150 out of 1000 applicants are accepted. In the interview they present a project from their 7th or 8th grade. They ask how why SLA would be better - they are looking for enriching students not the kids with DAF answers.
• What is the best way to get your thoughts across? Don't make the project around the tool. Focus lessons on understanding by design and project based learning.
• School is not something that should be done TO students.
• 94% matriculation rate, 80% four year college rate would have higher if there was scholarship for the kids to go to college.
• *****is it worth it to go to Syracuse in a premed track and get out with 70$ thousand in debt and then more? Or go to temple which will pay for your education? AYFS??? What is the ultimate success rate if you settle, what are you teaching kids through this whole experience? That in the end they don't have to try their hardest?
• Ultimate goal for these students is college though which is good.
• Essential questions for each year: Freshmen - Who am I? Because of the transition to being in an environment of All the Smart Ones, the midlife crisis.
• Some kids plug into the system, some kids don't, the ones here do, we don't let them drop out, we care about them and they know that. Very community based. Tutoring program of seniors tutoring freshmen and sophomores to build back into the community.

• How is college as an ultimate goal represented in the classroom and by the teachers?
  • I did not observe anything related to this in the classroom directly.

• What liberties do the students have and how do the students show their respect for them?
  • Students instantly get quiet regardless of who is speaking to them. Sat in an 11th grade history class tht was led by a 12th grade teacher aide instead of the substitute. This student was respected as the teacher. Class making a presentation using the best way they saw fit as a group many groups used Prezi in the last period. the substitute left the senior in charge of the class as though he was a teacher or an adult.
  • A graduated student came back and told us about how one of the major differences he sees is that he wants to come back that he feels like a person not a number. Students seem to desire very hands on learning.
  • We have so much freedom that there is no reason to act like a jerk.

• What is different about the teachers here than at other schools?
  • They seem to have the freedom to care.
  • I was only able to actually observe one teacher because the other teachers were not there during our exploration period. However, maybe that was better, or the point - it's not about the teachers here, its about the students and the school community as a whole, no one specific person is the key to success.
  • He wasn't my teacher he was my friend 
  • The teachers have a completely different quote understanding of what educational terms are. For example one teacher told us that this day was a little more direct instruction than he would have hoped for us to see, except the thing that we saw was nothing related to direct instruction.

• How is tech language used in the schools?
  • Just text her and ask where she is.
  • Did he put it on the moodle?
  • Many groups used a Prezi but there are lots of ways to do this.
  • One group used a google drawing. Here is my phone number it's 321-300-Jeff it's my Google Voice. Call me or text me if you have any questions.

Classroom Observations

History class - create a timeline using whatever presentation format you feel best.

All students are on their laptops no transition necessary very easy no time wasted. No one needed to tell or teach them how to get online and do the work. Ahead is another Prezi type program.

Student said that the technology I'd integrated in October of their ninth grade year and the fact as ninth graders that they are still using paper and still writing really makes them want to integrate into the technology quickly, the technology is built on over time and the classes are extremely interdisciplinary

National archives, ebscohost, SLA students and tech knowledgebase for resources

There's no teacher in the room and the students are just doing their work.

9th grade engineering classroom

Interacting first and if hadn't wouldn't have formed the friendships that they have now. They don't really talk now that they have the technology unless they have to talk to each other. They are an extension of ourselves.

Presentation by Principal Chris Lehman

The students are extrememly outgoing and motivated very confident.

We have unbelirbabley impowered kids thewprst part is that we have unbelievably impowered kids. It is our best ideas that so deceives of our destruction. Then you have 500 kids that feel like it is their job to challenge everything. So I asked the teachers to bring me two weeks worth of their work, it was a huge amount bound all up together. It was only two weeks , sometimes their well be weeks where the students do not think that your ideas and work match up the importance of the ideas. Y u are asking a lot of the students. Be gentle and kind when you set incrediblyhighexpectwtions for kids, be gentle and kind when they stumble trying to reach those incredibly high expectations

First rule, don't break the children.

With luck you will be in schools that understand the difference between coligality and collaboration.

Something you should ask when you go look for jobs, is what is the vision of your school and how do you help facilitate the teachers get there. How do you ramp up to that?

Why are you yelling? The best tools for inquiry is humor.

Every lesson based on how students will interact with those five core values. We use the same language. We all use understanding by design. Sometimes the best tool is the tolls we all decide to use together.

One teacher asked the students to reverse engineer the unit. All the teachers use the same rubric for major projects.

The ninth grade is about teaching process so that by the eleventh grade they can just go, and theycna go do amazing things. Our biggest complaint from students who come back to visit from college is that they feel they are taking a step back.

9th grade - week before school starts of half days low pressure Summer Institute the students have a one one one with an upperclassman who goes on their explorations with them and helps them understand the core values.

Advisors the students seem to create a family that maybe a lot of them do not have at home. At graduation they call up by advisory group not alphabetically.

Guided inquiry to open inquiry. A blank page is a terrifying thing.

Ninth grade is designed to help the students get all of the processes together before they can be released to go figure things out all by themselves. By seniors the project is to go do something interesting. Most schools don't have a theory of action where by their senior year students can do things independently they can stand up and say this is who I am and this is what I can do.

How did you prepare your first group of teachers to be in this environment?

The kids we need and the kids who need us. They have you all wrong downtown, you didn't build a schoolf or the the smart kids, you buit a school for the weird kids. Well every kid is a weird kid if you let them be a weird kid.

If you assign a project and then you get back thirty of the same things then you gave a recipe, if that is what you want then that is what you should assign them. How do you apt each students to ask good questions?

There is one question that you never know the answer to, that question is what do you think?

What do you teach? English, wrong. I teach kids, students should never be the implied subject of their education.

My goal that in a few years where we have a deep enough alumni base, every student can Have an email in their ninth grade inbox where someone says they graduated in 2006 and I'll be here on the other end of this email for the next four years.

This is their home, and that doesn't change when they leave.

Steve- different schools made and tailored to different types of students.

Visual Self-Reflection on Recording of First Lesson

For my first lesson I did a review of the chapters of The Giver that we had read so far as a class. The review was structured around the fact that I had noticed that the students had a disconnect between the text and questions they were asked. It seemed that the students did not really understand that when a question is asked it is often directly stated in the text especially when it is a content related question. Or the students simply did not want to look to the text. Regardless I designed a review activity to deal with both issues.


The review activity was that students had a set of questions that were on slips of paper in a bag in the middle of a group of four. The students also had a chart that had question numbers and then corresponding page numbers on which the answer would be found in each box on the chart.  The students had too choose a question and then find it's number on the chart and then turn to the corresponding page in the book to quote the answer from the text. As the students worked, I traveled around the room to assist in their small groups. 


Observations from 7B Video Recording:
I noticed that I smile a lot when I am talking to the students. I also either kneel or sit in a chair at their group so that I am on the same level as them thus giving a sense of working together rather than instructing. The students enjoyed the competition of searching for the answers and demonstrated this by encouraging each other to work faster. The students would say things like OOOHHH I found it, middle of the page! This was encouraging for me. The students demonstrated their engagement in the material by completing almost the entire chart. I noticed that at the end of the lesson I did some sort of weird voice intonation increase that is very unlike me and I need to not do because I believe it would be highly annoying. 


Observations from 7A Video Recording: 
I noticed that this class was much more against the assignment and showed by dramatic eye rolling and comments such as "But we've already read this." that they were not thrilled about returning to the text. There were several instances in the class where a student called me over to argue a point with them or a wording of a question. I think that my responses to the students were successful because instead of arguing back with them I just asked them more questions and got them to realize the detail they were actually looking for. It was nice when the students saw the "AH HA" moment and realized that they were arguing just to argue. The lower level students required more guidance and I could hear them getting off track until I came around to them on the video tape. This explains why the higher performing groups were able to finish their material and self-focus.  


Observation from 8B Warm-Up Recording:
I had begun using the strategy Cold Call with the students. I noticed that I tend to call on the same students and that I call on students whose names are easier to pronounce. So, I ultimately reverted to just calling on the students who raised their hands. I remember feeling nervous about saying the students' names wrong. This was evidenced in the fact that I would gesture somewhat shyly toward the students who raised their hand or make eye contact with them when I was unsure of how to say there names. I did however intentionally state that "I need a volunteer" rather than requesting one. The Cold Call strategy did work in the fact that I was able to call on students randomly and they responded. I need to improve my confidence in pronouncing the students' names.