Good Ideas

While playing on the internet a little, I found a website with some great lesson plan resources. I like to read lesson plans and keep ones that I like in a file and on my blog so that I have something to draw from my first years of teaching- one can never be too prepared.
Sometimes the plans I read just inspire lots of great ideas (thank you to experienced contributers who post those to share:). One that I viewed on this site tied in to the theme of community building that I have been thinking about a lot lately. The plan was intended to help young students become more familiar with their environment in the first days of school. The lesson was to introduce mapping skills while going through the rules and procedures important in those first couple days of school.
The idea led me to think of all kinds of variations on this idea that could serve as fun icebreakers as well as the introduction to the classroom community, reading, and map skills. It also reminds me of how important map skills are, even in our GPS; Mapquest, Google Earth society. In fact I almost think that they are more important because of that, children are not exposed to the same natural learning experiences- technology although fantastic in may ways also puts us in a weakened position when expected to survive with out it. I think kids of this technological generation are at a real disadvantage in that respect.
The lesson plan had children mark important spots on a simplified map of the school, as they toured the building and received instruction on rules bathroom use, library etiquette, cafeteria use, ect. I think the same concept could be used when introducing students to the setup and use of classroom resources. Re-enforcement to the use and procedures of the classroom can be turned into an icebreaker scavenger hunt, where kids are placed in groups and work as a team to find items on a list according to their use and storage in the room and then have to recite, write and/or discuss the procedure for use with their group.
Another really great lesson plan I read on this site is for older students as a year end culmination to the studies in history- whats great about this lesson is that it can incorporate several different components that build upon one another and also allows for integration into other subject areas such as research, writing, art and math. There is also the opportunity for independent work and collaboration. One of the things I might do is have students research and complete a portion of a timeline as a small group and then have them exchange their materials with another group and use the information gathered by the other group to create a diorama or theatrical re-enactment.

A Road Map to Memorization

This book, Strategies for Great Teaching: Maximize Learning Moments by Mark Reardon and Seth Derner, has some really good lesson ideas. I picked it up at my library and I think it’s definitely one I will spend the money on to have as a reference in my own collection. I am only about halfway through, but I already have fallen in love with a lot of the ideas presented
One of the chapters was about using maps. You deliver the instruction and then use the idea of map making as an engaging activity to solidify the information learned in the lesson. During the instruction, students are asked to take notes (the book also really focuses a lot of attention on teaching effective note taking techniques). Then, when introducing the activity, you show and discuss some examples of different kinds of maps and how they might be used in the context of the lesson. They also suggest that you have a self prepared one to show as an example. Then students can work alone or in groups to create a map which organizes and expresses the concepts learned in the lesson in a memorable format that also creates a visual organizer for the material. It could be a road map, a treasure map, a world map, an agricultural map, ect. The possibilities are only limited by the imagination. I immediately thought of game boards when I read this and I remembered in high school a project where we had to create a board game which was similar. I also thought of Candy Land, Life and a game I used to play when I was a kid called The Unknown Game. All of the boards for these games were a kind of map. They had specific destinations and paths to follow. There were some shortcuts and/or bridges connecting destinations. I thought that one way I could personalize this idea of making a map would be to create a foundational map, much like the game boards mentioned, which have standard routes, bridges connecting locations and shortcuts, and have the kids fill in the information from their notes using that foundational map. I thought that this might help teach them how to organize their own notes, how to make connections between material to find ways that ideas can be “bridged” together and how to recognize when shortcuts are appropriate. I also like the original concept of having them come up with their own map, plus the maps could then be used for a bulletin board display. I definitely will start to look at maps in a different way and hopefully begin to brain storm some different ways they can be used in lessons.
I obviously don’t have to plan lessons yet, but I do think about it a lot. Partly because I know that sometimes lessons need to be planned “on the fly” and because I know that planning an effective and engaging lesson might come second nature to a lot of experienced teachers, but when I am student teaching, and a new teacher, and when I am being observed the first few times, I am going to be thankful that I did a lot of research when I had the opportunity to and I might even appreciate the innocent and creative perspective I offered myself back when I didn’t worry about things like standards and just had ideas for the sake of thinking they sounded cool. Then, once I do learn the required curriculum and standards, I will have some idea on where I can apply all these fun activities!

An Abstraction of "Paragraph"

"I didn't have the vocabulary to say "paragraph," but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence. This knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph …. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased sister, my younger twin sisters and our adopted little brother."

This quote was taken from Superman and Me, an essay by Sherman Alexie,which was published in the Los Angeles Times, April 19 1998.

I just loved the way Alexie built upon his concept of a paragraph. As adults, it is hard to put ourselves in the mind of a child. It’s hard to imagine what those first moments of understanding a word, a sentence a paragraph and an entire work of literature feel like. It’s difficult to remember a time when we first put it all together and it became something meaningful.
The exploration of reading by Alexie, who grew up on a Reservation in Spokane, WA, was self lead and built on genuine curiosity in the meaning of the strange lines that covered the pages of his father’s books. I love the abstract thought that went into associating a paragraph with other meaningful groupings in his life. I think this is an excellent example of the kind of thought process I want to aspire to instill in students.

Teacher Moment

Last night as I was reading a book about creating quality lessons, I had a teacher moment. I envisioned myself teaching a literature lesson. We were having a whole class discussion about a book and I was trying to pull examples of themes, found in the book, from my students. I imagined asking one of my students to recall what a theme is and share it with the class. Then I would elaborate on that definition and ask for students to share their thoughts about what themes may be present in the book, as I create a brainstorm model on the board with their answers. I imagined a student responding with a portion of the plot and me replying with appropriate feed back: “that is an excellent observation Jimmy, however rather than a theme, you shared a portion of the plot.” Then I would differentiate the definition of a theme and a plot and suggest we use Jimmy’s plot observation as a platform for building on to find the theme. I would use a visual model of the building blocks of a story, say a pyramid.

I would then use Jimmy’s example (a small fragment of the whole) to find the individual elements involved in that portion of the plot, then as a group, determine what we think the theme to that segment of the story could be. Once I felt the students understood, we would then start brainstorming other themes present in the novel. At the end of the instruction portion, I would encourage any questions and ask students to write the models from the board in their writer’s notebook, as reference for their assignment.
The assignment would be to use the themes present in the story to find a angle in which the story is relatable on a personal level and write about it in their journals. What I would be expecting is identification of the chosen theme, and explanation of why that theme was chosen, 2-3 valid comparisons between the story and the personal experience as it relates to the chosen theme and a conclusion which states at least one valuable insight that the student can grow from that was discovered while analyzing the similarities.
This of course was just an imaginary account of how I might approach a lesson on literary analyses of theme and teach children how they can find deeper meaning within works of literature. This is an example of why it would be great to work with 4th- 8th grade because of the possibilities for more complex lessons and assignments.
Since I haven’t gotten into any methods courses yet and have nothing to go on except some basics on educational theory, I often feel as if my path is blocked by a giant question mark. I have a good general understanding of administrative structure, educational policy, educational style/approaches, theories on teaching diverse learners, inclusion, classroom management, room set up and the general responsibilities of teachers. But vary rarely do I get any sense of what executing any of this is actually like, how does it all come together into a meaningful experience for students? What will I say when I am standing at the front of the room with all those eyeballs focused on me? I really try to put myself in as many imaginary situations as I can but when there is missing knowledge and no understanding of curricular requirements, those teacher moments don’t feel complete. I have so far to go yet, but at least it’s a vision that I can hold and build on, something to bring me closer to closing the gap between theory and practice.

More Great Ideas

Another great idea came from this blogger. To help first graders get in the reading mode, she is taking photocopies of the covers of all the books she reads to them as a group (and has multiple copies of each book in the class library) and hanging the pictures up so that the kids can identify which book it was that they remember and want to try to read on their own. I really loved this idea because children are so visual. They are much more likely to make the connection that “hey, that is that book the teacher read that I like” and then pick up the book themselves.
I also think that this concept can grow with students into a visual card catalogue. The photo copies of the covers can be stored in a binder by author and then have a simple color and or number coding system on the classroom shelf to help students make a visual connection with identifying books by author and title as they will encounter in the real world- libraries and bookstores. Plus it’s a great way to organize a classroom library and keep an inventory of what books have been collected over the years and which are student favorites. A check out system can also be created. Some organizational methods that can be built from this idea:

• Colored dots can be used to indicate reading level, then secondary to the color dot can be a letter/ number system similar to the dewy decimal system.
• A sign out sheet can be used, possibly a simple paper with columns for the week kept in a child’s work folder. Bingo daubers that match the color codes can be used and the number of the book to indicate what the child is taking home for the week.
• Items checked out can also be interwoven with writing lesson plans- ie, children must write an entry in their journal citing their thoughts on a book taken out that week.

There are a lot of benefits in creating a simplified mock library within the classroom other than just encouraging kids to read. It can also serve as an introduction to library skills and as a platform for writing.
There is also a great opportunity for teachers to collaborate on this so that the skills are built upon each year (of course this may once again be my perfect world in my student mind, do most teachers really even have the opportunity [or in some cases probably open mind would be more likely!] to collaborate?) I read about some schools where the teachers seem to work really well to make the transition from each grade smooth, but I imagine that many schools are also not that collaborative in nature. Hmmm, maybe something to consider when I am looking for a job someday.

Virtual Observation

Last night I had a bit of insomnia so I went online to watch some education videos. I love watching anything that puts me right inside the classroom during a lesson plan so that I can observe how the lesson plays out, how the teacher approaches it and what the response is from the students. From these videos, I get some great ideas of lessons that I would like to implement someday.
Since English is my concentration and I look forward to working with young writers, I loved this lesson on “Lifting a Line” using student journals. I am a big proponent of journaling. Maybe that is why I love blogging! A journal is a great way to sort through thoughts, order priorities, track goals and deal with the complexities of life. With respects to writing, it keeps a constant creative flow that can help young writers find meaningful topics from every day experiences. I definitely plan to use journaling a lot during my teaching career. A video posted here shows how to clearly explain the concept of “Lifting a Line” to students. I also like how the teacher pulls something from her own journal which is a bit personal because I think it shows kids that their journal can be a safe outlet for their feelings and that writing can be a therapeutic process as well as a creative process.
Another video I watched last night demonstrated a collaboration of a group combined with the delivery in a game show format. I was impressed with how excited the kids were, literally on the edge of their seat! I also vaguely remember a game like this when I was in elementary school and could relate to the sense of anticipation and excitement that the students are clearly feeling during this lesson. This would be a great game for review prior to a test or to leave for a sub if you know that you will be absent.
I also love seeing the different teachers, how their personalities translate to the classroom, what their techniques and styles look like and how the children respond to them. This teacher (video- "Managing Literacy") has a great style to learn from. I love the rhyming instructions she uses that appeal to children, and the animation in her voice. I also notice that she repeats what she says then asks one of the children to repeat the instructions, but she does this all in a way where they feel like they are helping her rather than being told to do something. She has a very kid friendly character she uses in the classroom and the children are completely fixated on her every word.
The videos really put me in a comfortable frame of mind, where I can see what day to day operations in the classroom are like and how real children react. Not that I don’t learn a lot from all the reading I do, but this gives me a concrete experience to relate to.

Thoughts on a Collaborative Approach

While blog surfing today, I found a link to some free online professional development. I may not be a professional as of yet, but hey, free opportunities to learn right? So I read and learned a bit today about Cooperative and Collaborative learning. This was very interesting to me because I view this approach to learning as fairly new at the elementary level, since the collaborative approach was not as prominent 20-25 years ago when I was in elementary school (at least I don't recall spending much time collaborating with peers.) It makes me wonder if that is why I have an aversion to group work as a college student and why I tend to take the frame of mind, in my current career, that I would rather do things myself than accept the help of others. Effectively, anything which will have my name stamped on it, I want to be in control of. Is this an issue of trust or an inability to work effectively with a team?
I don’t consider myself bad at team work, In fact I usually have a strong role. I participate, I accept other’s ideas with an open mind and am actively involved with the production of a final product I can live with, but is it a final product I am proud of? I have to admit that in most cases usually not.
The information I read on cooperative and collaborative learning stated that this approach teaches children very important skills with respects to working with others, which is essential to success in most employment scenarios, but that teachers should be careful not to rely on this approach more than independent work. One of the points that were made is exactly what bothers me about group work: For some students, particularly detail oriented perfectionists, such as myself, the pressure of the group model may be too much to bear. Interestingly, this is a self inflicted problem. Even in a well balanced group, some students will shoulder more of the responsibility, sometimes that responsibility will be physically doing more work than other participants, other times the responsibility will be psychological, as the student feels less control over their own academic outcomes when placing trust in their peer(s) to perform at the level they would perform at on their own.
Despite these realizations, I am still a supporter of using this approach in the classroom. I think it offers a broad scope of benefits for students to learn life skills as well as critical thinking skills. The key is to know when this type of approach can be most useful.
I asked myself, “Where does a collaborative model work? What disciplines require different types of minds, different ideas, and objective viewpoints to lead to successful outcomes?” My feeling is that collaboration is best suited to the sciences.
Science curriculum is where I see myself using this model most effectively in a classroom experience. It offers an opportunity for students to discover aspects of the world around them and explore them with the input of several difference intelligences. Since we all have a unique perspective of the world around us, there is great potential for students to learn from each other and open their mind to different viewpoints.
I view mathematics as a subject which is best absorbed through visual and tactile learning, where each student works somewhat independently because they need to find their own way of understanding the concepts.
I view reading comprehension and writing as another subject where students are best left to their own thought process as they learn to analyze and question their own understanding of material and apply it literally and metaphorically, all though I do think that sharing completed work is extremely beneficial so that students can see the variety of creative thoughts that can be conceived through literary analysis.
Topics in social studies I believe to be best relayed through a variety of techniques experienced as one large group, whether it be pictures, group discussions, lecture, field trips, or creative interpretations through role playing, art, ect.
I think the most important thing is to utilize several different methods of delivery so that all students feel they have an equal opportunity to let their best characteristics come through. I think it is good also for teachers to attempt to focus on each child individually, at some point, in order to figure out where they best fit in to this model. We might be able to take a child who otherwise would recoil when it comes to a collaborative model, and find a place within that model where they can flourish.
Of course, in the perfect world within in my student mind, I am also assuming that teachers have time and energy to give sufficient attention to these projects. I hope that is the case in the real world, when I finally get there!

I May Be In Over My Head

I started another class this week. It’s a part 1 of the math for elementary schools teachers’ series. I have my schedule very tightly mapped out so that I can get in the 2010 registration for the NLU School of Education, however if I could go back in time I think I would have planned this differently. I only have two courses right now, but they both are in accelerated format because the summer term is only 8 weeks long, rather than the 16 weeks of the fall and winter term. Plus, they don’t offer the math courses at any time when I am able to attend a traditional classroom class, so I had to sign up for Independent Study. I think it would be fine except, whoops! Didn’t know that the only times the teacher is available for guidance during hours that I am not at work happen to be the two nights that I am at my other class. And, there are only two evenings that I can take tests on because of my other class. Unfortunately they don’t give you this information until orientation so it was a bit of a shocker to me. I’m feeling very nervous now.
I am very capable of doing well in math, however it doesn’t come naturally and I have to work very hard at it. It’s too late now to change my schedule so I just have to push through.
When I was doing my placement tests, I was able to refresh my memory on algebra and geometry through the use of several fantastic websites that are available (yet another reason why I love, love, love! the internet.) But I can’t seem to find anything quite appropriate for teaching me how to think like a mathematician. Most of what I am learning is logic and problem solving technique. Once I see how the problem was worked out, it makes perfect sense, but I know that I wouldn’t have come up with that method on my own. I would have re-read and pondered the question until my brain hurt, then started guessing for a half hour until I got an answer that worked. Obviously, I am going to have to learn some better methods to teach my students or they will be a very confused, so I think that this class will be good for me, but I really wish I had planned it better so that I had more time for this first course. Oh well. Now I have to come up ways to help me think like a mathematician. I’m trying to ask myself how I might help students with understanding and approaching word problems. Here are some thoughts I’ve had on this:

A. Use a worksheet format: create a work sheet where each step is broken down and there are questions to guide the student, and spaces to help organize the information in a functional and visual manner.

B. Use manipulatives to help the student visually organize information.

C. Breakdown the word problem word by word, to help identify what the important information is, then deal with each piece of information separately, such as identifying what is unique and can be said about that individual segment. Then determine which techniques can utilize those uniqueness’.

D. Make more complicated word problems easier by substituting the subject with something more relatable to the students to help them grasp the idea (the same way people often use the pizza analogy when dealing with fractions.)

E. Draw pictures that are memorable & meaningful to represent variables (rather than letters).

So my plan, as I am trying to work through the problems for my course, is to use some of these techniques for myself and see if they help. Hopefully I can make it through this term, right now I am feeling the weight of everything. My own fault, though, for not taking care of this when I was young and didn’t have to work or pay bills!

Priceless Resources

One reason that I am benefiting (rather than regretting!) going to college later in my life is that I now have the benefit of the internet as a resource. That is not to say the internet wasn’t around when I finished high school, but it was still a new concept to the public, most businesses were just beginning to advertise websites, so it wasn’t quite the networking resource it is now, and there certainly wasn’t nearly as much information to be found as there is now.
Teacher blogs and websites are some of my favorite places to peruse. Some experienced teacher’s have the best ideas for fun and engaging lessons, like this teacher who uses “Kung-fu Grammer” to teach the rules of punctuation, and this teacher who uses a book club format to get children to explore literature and engage in meaningful conversations about books with peers who are at the same reading level as them. What I love about these ideas is that they are both simple enough for a new teacher to use. I’ve seen some other great lesson plans that I just don’t know if I could pull off as a new teacher because of how meticulous of a process implementing it is. Somehow, I am expecting my first few years to be a bit overwhelming, so simple and effective is key.
Last night, I watched this video on the website that goes with my textbook. I think that this activity, although pretty intricate, would be a good activity for the beginning of the school year to help learn what kind of learner each student is so that I can plan more effective lessons. It uses the Multiple Intelligence theory and allows children to be active and creative. I love the fact that there are ideas in which they have to work, but no concrete rules, so you can provide the framework within which they can explore and come up with their own ideas.

An "Ahhaa!" Moment

I just started reading Donna Walker Tileston’s book on classroom management. The foundation of her method is that behavioral problems can be avoided if children are adequately engaged with the learning process, nothing new that I haven’t heard before. When she started elaborating on the neurological process of learning, I knew this book was right up my alley!
For the first time, I feel like I am reading something that is speaking my language, something I can actually put into practice effectively. While I understand that “in theory” and “in practice” are two totally different things, I feel immensely inspired by her method. While reading, my thoughts went beyond just concerns over classroom management, I actually could visualize myself implementing the methods in a lesson plan and it felt natural and comfortable to me.
Some points that thus far I am taking from the text that I want to remember for the future:

1. Engage students immediately by beginning the lesson with an activity that appeals to one of their senses. For instance, I could start a history lesson with a visualization exercise, helping to place them in a period of history using guided visualization and period music. This can help personalize the learning experience (“intrinsic motivation”.) Another sensory exercise that can be used to learn examples of geometrical shapes in the real world is to put common place objects that, for example, are cones into a pillow case or bag . Students could work in groups to feel the objects through the bag to identify what the objects are. Or, using that same tecnique, put several different geometrical shaped objects in the bag and have students use their knowledge of shape properties to identify what the shape is.

2. Have students teach each other. For example, to help build vocabulary, each week, students can be assigned to pick a word from the dictionary that they don’t know and present it to the class. The presentation would consist of teaching the class the definition, spelling, type and how to use it in a sentence. Students would be allowed to present the concepts in any creative way they choose. Each student will keep a vocab list of the words their peers teach and an writing assignment involving the use of the words would be due each weak. The writing assignments could built upon one another so that by the end of the year, all the words learned would have to appear in the story, helping memorization of new words and building of vocabulary. Guidelines can also be put in place like 5 letter words, words that start with “s” or adjectives only or use the words to write a story about a particular topic; to challenge and provide variety.

3. Connecting the material to something children can relate to. Giving lessons a proper introduction that tells students, before you get into the subject matter, how they can apply it to their lives, immediately, develops a purpose for the student to become involved in the lesson and listen/ participate (“self-system”.)