ICE 2016

I will be presenting on flipping the classroom to maximize and differentiate instruction in February. I plan to include different sections of the presentation. I have 50 minutes and it will be a poster session.

Introduction:
Objective
Purpose
Research to support flipped learning
Common Questions
Different Scenarios  (1:1 environment, 1: Many, etc..)

Resources:
Youtube
Zaption
Showme (and other whiteboard apps)
Teachertube
mysteryscience

Different Ways/Purposes:
Review
Learn new concepts
Show thinking and learning (making thinking visible)
Absent students
Increase application (assign lesson for homework)

Reflection:
What worked/what didn't
Pros/Cons
Teacher created vs. Student created
Classroom examples
Creating videos as you teach vs. pre made videos
How to keep students accountable

Questions

Snapshot below:

Math Talks and CGI

This year I have been attending training about for math coaches and the focus of the training has been on Math Talks and Number Talks. I have modeled a "Math Talk" in all classrooms at my elementary building. This "new" idea made some people a little hesitant because there have been some many new initiatives these past few years. Luckily, it seemed like the teachers were reassured that they were doing math talks in their classroom already. It is interesting to see how in my short 7 years-ish of teaching how many "new" ideas are just new names for old things that work (ie. Kagan Structures = Cooperative Learning).

Math talks and number talks should be focused around student thinking. Math talks help students talk about how they arrived to a solution and from this discussion teachers can formatively assess students. In addition, MARS tasks were introduced which really help classrooms who are trying to find differentiated materials for math center work time. MARS tasks are naturally differentiated and are once again a great formative assessment tool for teachers.

CGI (Cognitively Guided Instruction) Problem Solving follows the following 5 steps:
1.) Anticipating (purpose of the lesson)
2.) Monitoring (walk around and see how different students solve the problems)
3.)Reengagement (revisit the problem/concept)
4.) Sequencing (select work to show steps- of DOK)
5.) Connecting (transfer the skill)

Links to support with CGI math instruction:
http://www.heinemann.com/ChildrensMath/
http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/mathematics-glossary/Table-1/
http://www.dusd.net/cgi/

Reviewing MARS Tasks and CGI Math with the Staff

Week 2: PD in 5 minutes or Less

I am out of the district for training on Friday, but I wanted to keep up with my goal of a new idea presented at our staff meetings each week. I decided to create a quick video with iMovie using some of the clips from the Graphite website to share https://www.graphite.org/ with the staff.

Link for the quick Video thanks to Graphite!

Weekly PD: Week 1

Along with my goal to blog more regularly, I also have the goal to bring something new to the staff each week in 5 minutes or less. My goal is to "plant seed"s of ideas each week, not necessarily to "teach" the staff how to use a particular program or technique in their instruction. For the first week of my 5 minute "ads" I introduced Classcraft as a behavior management tool.

http://www.slideshare.net/RebeccaBrink1/classcraft-pd-week-1

Day 2 Shared/Guided Reading Coaching

#newschoolyear resolution:

Shared Reading

Guided Reading

Recording my Lessons in Order to Reflect 

Today was the second day I modeled Barnhouse strategies in both shared and guided reading. I was a little disappointed in the guided reading lesson from Monday. I found it very helpful when I taped the whole group reading lesson on Monday so I made sure to video tape the small groups I met with today (Tuesday).

I made sure to complete running records with the text to make sure that the students were reading at their instructional reading level during guided reading. I was a little concerned about the conversation in the two groups I met with in the morning. I met with the reading specialists in the building to brainstorm ways to get the kids to "Notice" details about the text without directing them to details.

I was very happy with how the small groups went today. It went so much better than Monday. On my Monday I went against my instincts for teaching guided reading and spent too much time on vocabulary instead of jumping right into the text; which is what I normally would do.

I will continue to note what worked well with the students and recording my lessons. I was able to keep track of how long I gave for wait time, calling on a variety of students, and techniques used for behavior management. I also recorded some of the students' responses so I could share that information easily with resource teachers and the classroom teacher.

Whole Group and Shared Lesson Day 1 Coaching

My goal for the school year (new school year resolution) was to blog more. The beginning of the year has be really crazy traveling between three different buildings. This week my focus is supporting some different teachers in our reading block. The teachers at my school use Dorothy Barnhouse's reading strategies for teaching reading. The Barnhouse strategies encourages students to have real discussions about books and naturally use different reading strategies. The teacher names the strategy that the student uses (Wow, that was a really short explanation that does not do it justice. The students end up having wonderful discussions about text!).

Today I was lucky enough to begin in a classroom and model both shared and guided reading. It is so different to go into classrooms where I don't know the students; unlike when I had my class and I could predict how the students would respond to questions and be able to catch most behavior problems before they occurred. I made sure to begin the lesson with a quick assessment using red/green cards. I do not know if the students were comfortable with holding up the red side of the card to admit they were unsure about the statements I made. It was a little difficult to get a full class assessment using this method today (this may be more effective after I visit the classroom and build relationships with the students).  Below is the lesson plan for day one shared reading:

The pre assessment ended up taking longer than I had planned, so I needed to rethink my plans for the next day.  We also did not have time to write a story chart in our reader response notebooks because we took extended time on our discussion about the pre assessment prompt. 

Based on the running record data I collected I decided to spend a day on vocabulary with the guided reading groups. I usually jump right into the text during guided reading, but I noted that the students could use support with "debugging" the words before we got started. I also wanted to get to know the students as readers and so for me I like to talk about strategies they use when confronting an unknown word. After meeting with the small groups, I decided to rework the groups for Tuesday. I moved some of the students around so that they would be successful in the text I placed them in (Thank goodness for flexible grouping!).
I was a bit disappointed with how I scaffolded the first two groups I met with in guided. After the lesson I met with the reading specialist to see how I could increase the small group conversation with the groups that need a bit more support. She suggested that before scaffolding the questions/prompts I give the students, I should narrow down the text, sentence-by-sentence if I need to. The last two groups I met with seemed excited about the text I gave them and were reading to annotate like crazy and talk about patterns within the text.
I think it will go much more smoothly tomorrow now that I have completed running records with most students as well as asked comprehension questions. I have a better idea about how the students are as readers.

Student Led Discussion Strategy

My goal is to reflect on or write about at least one teaching strategy each week.
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/high-school-literature-lesson-plan

Pinwheel Discussions
I attached the link to the Teaching Channel video that showed this strategy in action.

Description:
In the video, all students were expected to read three articles that were related. The classroom was set up with four desks in the center of the room and the rest in a pinwheel formation (see image below). The students would work in their small groups of 4 to ask and answer text dependent questions.

Each student is assigned to one article to focus on. There will be a "provocateur" (name change for younger grades) in each small group. Each roll will meet with like rolls in the class to begin to discuss the text. The "provocateur" group will begin to construct text dependent questions that will fuel the discussions. After like groups meet to plan, the discussion begins.

The teacher's roll is simply to facilitate discussion. They also can keep tallies of different agreed upon discussion tactics (using text proof, bringing new ideas to the table, building off of another student's ideas... etc).

The video was taken of a high school classroom, however this technique can be easily modified for lower grade levels.

I like how all students are expected to be involved during the discussion unlike a teacher led discussion. Each students needs to listen as the 4 students talk in the center of the room so that they can bring new ideas to the table. Students lead the conversation and it gives them ownership over their own learning.