The Chatty Teach: 2010

See Chat Share

See my Chat Share below for a followup on my Resilient Classroom Project!

Welcome to The Chatty Teach!

– a blog dedicated to improving inclusive and motivating classrooms

Our 3 main threads:

1. Resources & Tools -to help us connect to, understand & honor our students (surveys, lesson ideas, etc)

2. Chat Share on what works and what doesn’t for motivating students & improving management

3. Thought Jar to fill with your bite-size ideas and mine for improving inclusivity & honoring diversity in the classroom

I can’t wait to hear from you!

Best wishes,

Ms. Chatty Teach

p.s. Entries are not posted in true chronology. Older posts may appear first because I grouped them by strand!

Let’s Review our Rules & Intentions!

1. The Chatty Teach is a safe environment for sharing thoughts, tips, and perspectives – always be respectful & please remain anonymous – pseudonyms are fun!

2. The Chatty Teach is meant for teachers, parents & community members who care about reaching students! -adults only please

3. Stay positive – no one likes a grumpy teach!

Thought Jar

Tidbit 1: Creating a Supportive Classroom Ecology

Help all children & parents feel comfortable. Take an hour to host a class picnic, where parents can attend, send food, or send a wish for the class to be read aloud if they cannot come. Have students translate if their folks speak another language. Make this a purely social call with 1 easy getting to know you activity. If you can, arrange to call the parents who can’t make it while everyone is there just to have the group shout into the phone, “Room 25 is thinking of you!” Having one of your first parent interactions be positive & welcoming will start that crucial parent-teacher team mentality.

Add your own tidbits to the jar!

Thought Jar Tidbit 2

Tidbit # 2: Teaching Diverse Populations

I recently heard author Tim Wise give a talk about strategies to improve equitable student treatment. I want to share some main points that came from a discussion afterwards with my colleagues:

1. Teach racial conflict from a point of strength, resilience and allies. - This avoids producing the guilt or fear that often comes when teaching from a point of victimization.

2. Children are not colorblind.Talk about race, ethnicity and culture openly, regularly, but not all the time.

3. Admit to your own embedded biases, so you can start to overcome them.

4. Be mindful of the images and messages embedded in your lesson plans. Provide role models for your children. (i.e. Black History Month is not the only time to have a black protagonist in your literature)

It's blunt. It's obvious. It's important to talk about.

Thought Jar Tidbit #3

I just read two articles about critical pedagogy, read Hill’s Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life, about Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Hook’s Teaching to Transgress.

Som thoughts...

I have to question my whole management style now. Yes we need order and many students need a quiet environment to learn. But if that’s what they wanted innately and naturally, why does it not happen automatically? Why am I fighting their natural tendency, compelling them to be part of an orderly, quiet structure, for which, who knows how much use they will have for, considering the way learning and working are changing so rapidly? I began to tap into this shift in intention during my Classmaps project and the last few weeks’ readings. This takes me to Hill. “Real recognizing real?” I need to really invest more in what these little people in my room really like. I confess that I have been tentative. I have not put every math or handwriting or reading lesson into truly meaningful and truly relevant contexts for them. It’s more like refreshing pops of contexts now and again. Also, the contexts I lean toward are from my childhood. But these children are different. My students relate to authority in a whole different way. They are booked with activities from morning until night, they are not afraid of adults the way I was, and their music and cartoons are a far cry from My Little Pony Sing-Alongs. Basically, I cannot deny what their 2nd grade version of “hip-hop” is. Now while, my particular population of 2nd graders are probably not listening to hip-hop itself in their spare time – I need to figure out what their “hip-hop” is. What do they own, and believe in?

Now this all may sound a little dramatic for teaching 2nd grade. But I think, such a dramatic shift in my mind-set, can really change how they feel about school and it’s purposes. I don’t want them to think I want them to listen for listening’s sake, or because I said so, but because it will allow them to pursue their curiosities. Will they love every lesson? No. I understand that. But we need that “collective response” to something meaningful for them that serves as the “suitable hook for sustaining student interest.” (Hill) Similarly, Hooks writes of "lived" realities beyond the classroom that the learner needs to connect to in order to find meaning. I wish that I had a room full of student’s whose culture was entirely different from mine, so I could exercise the real meat of these two articles, and bring in hip-hop and other vernaculars into our literature (and I can and actually have in moderation, with children’s literature by Angela Johnson such as the book “Do like Kyla”). But my school community is mostly white upper-middle class that relates more to Brittany Spears than to Nas. But still, I understand the message and will infuse a perspective shift that honors “liberation” and not adherence.

Chat Share

(Motivating students/Improving Management)

What tips can you share?

Post # 1: Have Students Help Bear The Management Load!

Let’s see what ownership does for management.

Most teachers use “table group” incentives (i.e. if the whole table is quiet, then that group gets a point & enough points lead to some kind of positive benefit.) But you simply can’t get every table quiet every time and never show negativity.
I am a firm believer in giving children “do’s”, not “don’ts.” But boy is that tough when you can so easily say, “don’t disrupt,” “stop talking to your neighbor,” “I’m sorry your group doesn’t get a point…” Children need positive actions to take with their bodies, not just their minds. Children need to feel ownership over their environment. So let’s brainstorm to turn theory into practice…
My question is, do your students really know how they can kindly help each other settle down?
This year I am making a commitment to explicitly model what to do, for table points.
At least 3 times a week for at least the 1st 4 weeks of school (& many times thereafter), I am going to show students (not tell) how to ask their neighbor to join in being quiet. I will give them 3 active steps to execute:

1. Drop all materials & use large, deliberate movements to straighten up & sunburst their arms into place, folded on the desk. (let the kids be physical in some way!)

2. Wait 3-5 seconds. Lean in & whisper to a talking students, “Name, please help me.”

3. Be proud & keep modeling perfect behavior, looking up at the teacher until your mates take the hint.

The PRIDE is the empowewring agent that turns the sheepish student into a role model - show children how to lift their chins, stick their chests out and stand up for wjhat is right. Later relate this sense of agency to doing what is right in other situations...so many tie ins!
I will report back on how this shift from teacher to student directed management works (or doesn’t) over time.
What other student directed tricks do you use?

Happy Teaching! – Ms. Chatty Teach

Chat Share # 2

How can we engage students? Meaningful Contexts!

So let's nab two birds with one stone and use core curricula to teach social understanding. Here are some links for lesson plans that combine Math & Social Justice. (I will re-post as I try some lessons out for lower elementary)

First Grade

http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200905/BTJMurphy.pdf

Algebra/Discreet Mathematics and +

http://www.wfu.edu/~mccoy/socialjustice/

Quick Ideas Across The Grade Levels

http://cus.oise.utoronto.ca/Lesson_Plans_Social_Justice_Issues.html

Relevance Project

http://gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/enyedy/Home_files/enyedy_mukhopadhyay_JLS.pdf

It is vital that we teach children to have a moral compass, and also help them see the practical applications for the math "they are never going to need in real life." I've heard these anti-math comments as early as first grade! (Hopefully not from my students)

I really believe children naturally want to be good and protect each other. Let's let them exercise that in constructive, standards-based ways!

Here's a Counter Argument to My Post for Fun:

http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2005/06/social-justice-math.html
(I truly think application is vital to fostering a child's love for math - politics, per say, can be neutral from the teacher)

Chat Share #3 - response to RELEVANCE/Not Rules

Thank you anonymous for your COMMENT on RELEVANCE (CHAT SHARE # 2). I completely agree that compliance to rules, like not talking out, is not at all a measure of engagement (though it is helpful for the learning environment for short direct instructional times.) I look for MOTIVATION,active involvement and the students either leading the discussions or producing the "product" as you say.
I've noticed that getting the students to take over can be hard at the beginning of the year, as they are trying to abide by procedures and may be shy in front of new classmates and a new teacher. The students certainly need direct positive feedback to feel confident in their opinions, without worrying about being "wrong" - especially for math. So far, I am having students practice looking at each other when they share their thoughts, and not always at me. This helps create an environment that is student centered, and open to peer discussion. When young children discuss topics with one another, and don't just answer questions, they themselves bring context and relevance to the lesson with concrete, example-based child thinking. Again, this takes practice at the early elementary level - but I see it working already!

Furthermore, on the idea of COMPLIANCE, children naturally need to speak and move. I believe in having partner and group collaboration and moving between tables be part of my lessons - so long as it is controlled and the students know how to share the floor, and when and how to stop and listen. When the procedures for being safe and fair are in place, children can not only absorb ideas and knowledge, but they can apply them to projects and activities that have RELEVANT CONTEXTS.

Thanks Again & Happy Teaching1 - Ms. Chatty

Chat Share # 4 Report on Passing the Management Buck

So I'm reporting back on my first chat share, where I wanted students to take on more active roles self-managing their behavior. I had noticed, that the students who had an easier time following guidelines, listening and sitting still, were the quieter spirits in general. I asked them to be leaders and assert themselves kindly by modeling exceptional behavior with pride and large body movements. This was supposed to help signal their peers to quiet down and self manage with less teacher intervention.

The first day it was incredible. My more meek souls were spreading their good influence and seemed to beam when they could help their table partners quiet down. Then it was day two, and the impact dwindled. Then it was day 3 and the effect was even less. Basically, when I remind those quiet souls how to assert themselves - they really help. i don't know if they will need fewer reminders as the year goes on. But basically, if we don't do the reminder in the morning - it won't happen that day. If I do, it works nicely, and helps me stress less. Surprisingly, I have not had any issues with students being bossy about reminders. My noisier ones seem to respect their peers for showing good behavior and tend to listen.

I think I am going to take this a step further and have one of my class jobs be the "General Manager." The Managers will be responsible for helping the teacher track table points for good behavior and will be allowed to give one verbal signal to help the class quiet down when we work in partners or groups. They will not have the floor when the teacher is giving instruction. I wonder how things will go...

Chat Share #5 Arizona Law - Ethnic Studies

Here is an article from the Washington Post Site (Text below):

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/in-arizona-bad-ethnic-studies.html

by Valerie Strauss

Read, weigh in...act?

The governor, Jan Brewer, has signed into law a bill that was passed because the state superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne, who happens to be running for attorney general, dislikes a Mexican-American studies program in Tucson Unified School District that allows students to learn in history and literature courses about how particular ethnic groups influenced history, the Associated Press reported.
The bill, about which I wrote last week, prohibits any classes that:
* Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
* Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
* Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
* Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.
The first two points are ringers, of course, for Horne’s real problem: According to the Associated Press, Horne has wanted to limit the program since he learned several years ago that Hispanic civil right activist Dolores Herta told Tucson high school students that “Republicans hate Latinos.”
The governor signed the bill just after six United Nations human rights experts released a statement saying they had concerns about the measure and noted that all people have a right to learn about their own cultural and linguistic heritage.
Of course, the United Nations’ record on human rights is not exactly exemplary, given that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights has included member states with abhorrent human rights records, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Syria, Libya, and, in 2004, Sudan, whose election to the panel sparked the walkout of the United States ambassador.
But on this issue, the U.N. experts have it right.
The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group, the Associated Press reports.
District officials say the program only provides historical information. In the Mexican-American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors. The kids learn, for example, that Arizona was once part of Mexico, and that in the 1960s Chicano radicals called for reclaiming the land.
Subversive stuff, that.
By itself, this move is one small-minded bill that pretends to be about education but is all about politics.
The problem is that it isn’t the only one. Legislators in many states seem intent on dictating to educators how to do their jobs, even though the lawmakers don’t really have a clue.
We tried this once before, in a big law called No Child Left Behind, which was designed with the input of not a single teacher, and which spectacularly failed in its goal to close the achievement gap.
We never seem to learn from our own mistakes. How do we expect kids to do that if the adults can’t get it right?
-0-
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By Valerie Strauss | May 12, 2010; 11:17 AM ET

Chat Share: My Resillient Classroom Project

I had posted a while back about trying to pass more of the management responsibility to my students, so that they would begin to self manage more. Well, for my master's program I took on a project to overhaul the ecology of our classroom.

The purpose of our resilient classroom project is to investigate the ecology of our second grade classroom by collecting data on our students’ perceptions of the class environment, identifying key issues and concerns and coming up with and implementing a plan to improve those conditions, then tracking results.
My team and I administered a modified CLASSMAPS survey to analyze data about how the students felt about their classroom ecology, including their peers, their teacher, their academic efficacy and behavioral self control. The class discussed data which needed attending to and came up with a plan to implement interventions for improvement in behavioral management.

The hardest part of this process was then identifying how to measure progress in the three named areas of need. I started week 1 of observation taking far too much data to be manageable. I was trying to record too many anecdotal details about verbal redirections and how kids were feeling about their behaviors at any given moment. This was taking too much class time. I honed in on taking the rating scale system of 1-10 once a day after I taught my math lessons. The students and I would rate the class behavior during a lesson with 1 being the poorest behavior and 10 being outstanding. We would average the student answers, noting the range, and then compare how the teacher and students’ perspectives compared and contrasted. I showed my most advanced math student Liam how to find the average on the calculator. On days that he finished work early, he helped to solve for some of the data. Furthermore, I had the students with the line coral job help count if we had to stop for redirection while in line, then I would jot down the number each day. Thirdly, as for name-calling and problem solving on the yard, I sent a not out to the yard duty teachers to let me know of/when my students were involved in altercations. I also sought them out personally and tried to keep my ears open to students. This was probably the least accurate form of data collection, but it at least gave ,e a frame-work for analyzing trends n behavior.

At the end of the four weeks, the team looked at the results. Overall we saw similar trends with all three areas. We saw a slight decline to no change week 1, a rebound spike week 2 and then a gradual decrease in undesired behaviors almost across the board for weeks 3 and 4. Also, we noticed that Mondays seemed to be difficult for students, as they needed to get back into good habits from the weekend. We noticed that we saw improvement in playground behavior on days there was a character-building lesson, and then the number of incidents would trickle back up.

In conclusion, my students and I have been very affected by this process and how we think about our roles and our dynamic. I had a major attitude shift in how I saw my role as the children’s guide, but not ruler of the class. It is difficult to say, how much the students were responding to the implementation of our plans, or how much had to do with other variables, such as subtle changes in how we disciplined and spoke to the children. Overall, the experience was positive for both the students and teacher, helping us to understand one another. Even in titling this paper, I began to write, “My Resilient Classroom,” then thought better of it and changed it to the more appropriate “Our Resilient Classroom.”

Chat Share/ Tools & Resources: Resillient Classroom Followup & Easy Grapher

Here are the formal sets of data responses that were shared with students for our Resillient Classroom project:

(23 students)

My teacher is fair to me.
21 yes, 2 sometimes

My teacher helps me when I need help.
18 yes, 5 sometimes

I do not worry about hard work in this class because I know I can do it.
5 yes, 11 sometimes, 7 no

I follow the rules in this class.
19 yes, 4 sometimes

Most kids follow the rules in this class.
9 yes, 13 sometimes, 1 no

Most kids work quietly and calmly in this class.
12 yes, 11 sometimes

My teacher is fair to me.
21 yes, 2 sometimes

I know other kids will not tease me, call me names, or make fun of me.
10 yes, 8 sometimes, 5 no

The data was presented to students via a Notebook software presentation on the Smartboard. The team used a child friendly government sponsored website http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph to create readable, colorful and developmentally appropriate graphs for the class meeting.

The graphs appeared enlarged and projected on the board as follows:

Resources & Tools:

1. To Move Forward, Know Where You’re Starting…

Click below for a “My Voice Matters” survey for students on how they feel about school, their abilities, peers and teachers

- created by Ms. Chatty Teach

– Please feel free to modify & Chat Share back on what you learned from your children:

My Voice Matters Student Survey

2. Multicultural book lists to help honor your population:

By Dr. Robert F. Smith, Professor Emeritus, Towson University, Towson, MD

http://www.multiculturalchildrenslit.com/

3. Teacher Effectiveness Quiz by Harry K. Wong:Take it & Chat Share back what you learned!

http://www.effectiveteaching.com/cart.php?m=content&page=7

4. Books for improving Management & Effectiveness

by Harry K. Wong

(I personally recommend The First Days of School

– it’s a game changer!)

http://www.effectiveteaching.com/cart.php?m=product_list&c=1

5. Get to know what your middle & high school students are up against:

The California Student Survey (CSS) is a voluntary, anonymous, and confidential self-report survey of substance use, school safety, harassment and violence, youth resilience factors, and health-related behaviors.

Caution: this survey contains explicit questions about drug and alcohol use!

http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/hhdp/css_midd_0910_inddversion.pdf

6. Tim Wise's Blog - CHECK IT OUT, CHECK YOURSELF, CHECK YOUR PRACTICE!

Mr. Wise is one of the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists of our time

http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege

Also check his video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-VEWJncnsk

7. If you're serious, try and implement this...
Tools to Assess the ecology of your classroom