Discussion Poker--A new twist (for me) on an old problem

February.

Tuesday morning.

First block. 

Kids I've had all year. 

Kids who have had each other all year.

How's class discussion #183 going to go? 

My classes are quite comfortable with each other, for better (they generally like each other) or for worse (they have fallen into patterns of behavior that make a class conversation predictable). Joe will speak first. Kelsey will argue with whatever Joe says. Carlo will jump to Joe's defense. Nate and Brooke will sit quietly and watch the chaos unfold. 

Or the ping pong will commence. Mike will throw out an idea. Jiyuan will use the phrase, "To add on to that..." and then make a comment that really has no relationship to whatever Mike has just said. Add a third student. Repeat. 

I wanted to manage two different discussion challenges; I wanted to shoot for more equitable participation in class discussion, and I wanted to build my students' awareness of different discussion moves that they could use to build an idea. 

http://jeffzwiers.org/tools

I've had this poster from Jeff Zwiers in my classroom in various forms over the last few years. I love how it asks us to think about building ideas. Together. But I've had limited success with getting this in front of students in a way that has really supported their conversations. Until Tuesday morning. Because February in northern Indiana breeds a special kind of desperation for creativity.

Discussion Poker 

The plan for the day was to discuss a chapter from our central text that we had read the night before. They had a reading guide that they had completed and could use that to fuel the discussion, but they also all had notes in the margins of the texts from their own reading. 

I dealt three cards to each student. Face down. They were intrigued. Even excited. Some of them immediately turned the cards over. Others followed directions and left them alone. Sophomores. 

I told the class that we'd be having a conversation, but that the cards in front of them determined the kinds of mental moves that they'd be allowed to make during the discussion. The types of comments/mental moves: 

A-4 -- ask a question to create or clarify. 

5-9 -- make a statement using the text to create or fortify the conversation

10-K -- negotiate or present a counter-argument. 

Students turned all three cards face up in front of them. 

As a student made a comment, they flipped the appropriate card over. The only other ask I made of them was that they seek balance in the participation in the room, so no student should turn over three cards before every student in the room had turned over at least one.  

And they were off. 

The Reflection (Where the real wrestling happens...)

I told my students that I have been teaching for 20+ years, and this was the first time I was trying this activity, so I needed their feedback on our trying something new together. They were full of ideas. Here's what they said I should consider:

•  Deal one of each mental-move family to each student, so that every student is required to make all three of those thinking moves in a discussion.
• Allow students to trade cards with their neighbors. Some students had a comment they wanted to make, but they didn't have the right card to make that type of comment. 
• Figure out a way to make it into a poker game. (This was as far as this thinking went--they didn't have anything more to offer beyond their enthusiasm). 

I loved the balance that it brought to the discussion. And I loved seeing the students (like their foreheads were scrunched up in thought) trying to think through how to appropriately add to the conversation using their cards rather than sharing the first thought that came to their minds. 

I loved the energy it brought to a Tuesday morning class. Full disclosure, though, that energy didn't translate to my second block. There was some funk in the room, and students didn't fully embrace the approach. Even in that block, though, the deck of cards helped remedy some of the funk. Students who were primed to butt heads coming into the conversation because of some carryover from their previous class together had that behavior neutralized by the deck of cards--they had to choose their moves wisely. 

This one will make a reappearance in my classroom at some point with some modifications. I'll update as I work to improve on it. 

Wrestle on, friends. 

White-Knuckling It Until Break--"Last Week" Inspiration

Winter Break is five class days away, and we are providing every possible distraction for students--from hockey games to holiday pony rides to holiday concerts to the dining hall's holiday dinner, and we've got athletes leaving early for competitions. I've got students crawling the walls ready to get on planes and head off for their three-week breaks. Three weeks. (I might as well let you in on a little secret here, too. There's a bit of wall-crawling happening for me, too...)

What to do? What to do? 

I've never been satisfied with wrapping a pre-vacation week with a film. There's something about saying farewell to my kids by not really speaking with them that bothers me. Films should be taught. But I haven't found the right film for the last week before holiday break. Or the right balance of viewing and dissecting. Last year, we were just wrapping a unit on The Merchant of Venice, so we spent the two days before break dissecting Pacino's performance in the role. Somehow, it didn't feel like the right tone for the festive holiday season coming up (and we spend plenty of time in the depths of humanities studies--Humanities 10 isn't afraid to go heavy). 

For a brief time, I thought I might be able to start them on the personal projects I ask them to choose post-break. But I wondered how effective that might be with a three-week break in the middle of it. 

So here's where I've landed. I wanted something that will not be too heavy, will manage the multiple "non-assignment nights" we have this week, will not put students who are leaving early too far in the hole, will give me time to interact with my students, and will allow for individual student choice. What I've landed on isn't revolutionary, but I am excited about it. We're reading. 

Monday night of this week, I've asked students to post one or more book recommendations for their classmates and me. I've got an example I wrote for them posted to a Schoology discussion board:

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Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer was on Mount Everest during one of the most disastrous climbing seasons in the mountain's recorded history. In May of 1996, he went on a climbing expedition as a writer for Outside Magazine, and he got caught in a storm no one saw coming. Five people died. Countless others' lives were impacted. This is his take on the event. 

Yet another non-fiction text (I do read fiction, too...). I'm into endurance athletics, and I've always been fascinated by what makes people test themselves in what most people consider to be outrageous ways. I've never really been drawn to the idea of climbing in the way the people do in this book, but I recommend the read because it is an absolutely gripping tale of man versus nature, man versus man, and man versus himself. It's written in such a way that even though you know disaster is coming, you still want to jump onto the pages of the book and make all those people long gone change their minds or turn back. (Incidentally, Krakauer has written a number of other books, and I can just give a blanket recommendation for him as an author here.)  

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Between Tuesday and Thursday's class, they need to find a book to bring to class. And Thursday and Friday we'll do some "pleasure" reading or "leisure" reading in class. 

I've got a couple of other reflective moments built into the plan. There's a moment this week when I'll give them some time to do a mid-year reflection that I keep until May. It's nice for them to think about how far they've come since August, imagine how far they'll go before the end of the year, and then see it at the end of the year as I'm asking them to write to their seven-years-from-now selves. 

On Thursday and Friday we'll have some time to read and then some Bowmanville cafe time when they'll have some time to talk about their reading with each other. There'll be snacks and hot chocolate. And I hope that we'll wrap the week with them engrossed in something to read on their plane rides, having reflected on the start of their sophomore year, and excited to see each other again in January. 

I'll let you know how it goes. Wrestle on, friends. Holiday style. 

The post-experience update
So on Thursday, they took their test, read their books, and I did a quick check-in at the end of class to ask what they were reading. A number of students didn't come to class with books, but I had a stack of some of my favorites in the room, or I sent them next door to the library to get something so that everyone would have something for Friday. Students brought their own mugs to class, and we went through a pot of coffee and a  bunch of hot chocolate and some tea.

But I also got sick. Like swimming head cold sick. So by the time I got to class on Friday, I lacked the endurance to get through classes with kids who were VERY ready for break. I showed up with snacks, and we did some reading, but I was just sick. And students were really resistant to reading in books (which broke my heart into a 1000 pieces). I had a few who wanted to read books, but I think I had more who were wanting to read on their phones. And I didn't have the energy to try to rally their enthusiasm around books (more than providing them the time, the snacks, and caffeine, and the comfy chairs). The forces of Holiday vacation were also working against me.

I'll try again. 

Forming, Norming, Storming--Kicking off the School Year

I often cringe when someone asks a group I'm in to do some "norm setting." It usually feels too soon. Or too late. If it's too soon, the group develops a generic list of expectations that have no teeth to them or grounding in the reality of the work before them. If it's too late, the group develops a list of norms in a passive-agressive reaction to existing irritants ("No screens!"), or the group feels beyond the point of no return and isn't willing to say what they need. Allea iacta est. It's tough to squeeze that toothpaste back into the tube.

So, I was intrigued when this Edutopia post titled, "The Science Behind Classroom Norming" popped up in (teacher nerd alert!) my newsfeed this week. The word "science" caught my eye; "if there's a science to it," I thought, "I should probably try to better understand this!" Not really. I was primed to dislike the article before I even opened it because of my thinking about norm setting. I actually cringed a little bit, already skeptical about what was coming, but then I clicked on the link and found some food for thought for the coming school year.

The author first makes the claim that "the mechanism for norming is group talk" and then goes on to define norming as when a group comes to "an agreement among members of a classroom or school about how they will treat one another." The power of the relationship between action and words, though, should not be discounted in the process. My sophomores set non-verbal norms relative to use of classroom space simply by placing themselves in the same seat each day; habits become norms. So norms will develop--stated or not.

Here is my hopefully less-than-cringe-inducing thinking about norming heading into this new school year:

1. Timing matters. 
Mr. Finley highlights the stages of group development (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning); understanding the stage of a group is key to hitting the sweet spot for norm setting. In my facilitation experience, however, groups seldom adhere to the order outlined here by Mr. Finley. They'll form, norm, storm, go back to norming, perform, then storm again. Sometimes, after a storm, they transform because people leave the group.  Most teams go through some sort of storming after a poor performance in a highly anticipated game, for example. Group growth comes when a facilitator can help them move among the stages. Being thoughtful about where a group is allows us to know which conversation to facilitate when.

So I'm not going to do a norm-setting exercise on the first day of school (or the first day of meetings, for that matter). Not on the second day of school, either. I'm going to give my people some time to get over their anxiety about the start of the school year and to get to know one another well enough that I can task them with cooperating on group problem-solving activities. My big plan? I am going to shoot to formalize class norms in the moments before a storm hits. It's the Goldilocks plan--not too hot, not too cold... just right.

2. What's my role? Leader? Guide? Mentor? Consultant? 
A diagram in my experiential education files dated 1999 and credited to Laurie Frank places those four roles on a spectrum for group facilitation. She posits that in the earliest work with a group, the person facilitating must be a leader (although that term is open to broad interpretation). As the group continues to develop, the facilitator can move into a guiding role. It's that point where I'd like to be before I ask the group to set their own norms. In the past when I've facilitated norm setting with a group too soon, my voice has carried too much weight in the room. Mr. Finley mentions that he has his favorite norm: "I always add my favorite norm to the list: enter class with the academic swagger of Matthew McConaughey, ready to take care of business." I love the flair for this norm, but I'm not sure if I am comfortable adding my own ideas to my group's list, however, if I really want the students to own them.

3. Anticipate accountability issues. Norms! 
I ask my students to sign off (really--with a pen!) on the norms after we've come to an agreement on what they'll be. With one class last year, those stuck so well that when a new student joined at the semester, the students asked him to add his signature to our class agreement. Those students bought into the norming process. In my other class, however, the poster hung on the wall, and our stated norms became a room decoration. I'll need to consider my role in holding students accountable to their agreed-upon norms; otherwise, the group may re-norm without any of us noticing (and that won't necessarily be a good thing).

What might be a good thing for accountability, though, is if my students are fans of Cheers and can yell, "Norm!" every time someone breaks one... kidding. Well, only sort of.

George Wendt as Norm in Cheers

4. Revisit and revise--group processing 
I'd also like to think this year about ways to get more bang for our buck out of a norm-setting exercise. I am lucky to have my block-scheduled students all year long. We'll need to revisit the norms periodically (every term?) as the group progresses--performs, storms, re-norms--over the course of the school year. I'd like to make the norms document a living document for my students.

And the year begins...
Mr. Finley shares some of his favorite exercises to support the norming process in his post. Neat ideas. I appreciate the bigger picture questions his post raised for me, though. Wrestle on, friends.

Shrinking Class Sizes...even if the schools can't/won't

Had some fantastic conversation with colleagues today about accommodations for ELLs, but the question kept coming up about how to provide accommodations for these students while still teaching the other students in the class. I suggested using the ESL Instructional Aides and Resource Teachers in the classroom in order to be more creative in our approach to teaching. Here are a couple of suggestions that came out of our conversation:

1. Teachers seem to often schedule their entire class for a day on Study Island (or another computer-based project where the students are largely working independently). The teacher's role is often to monitor the students on the computers or record the student results as they report in. If this is the case, then the suggestion is to schedule two days instead of one. Divide the class in half. Have half the students work on the computers or on the computer project. Work with the other half of the class in small group. On the second day, flip the groups. If someone needs to monitor/support the students on the computer, that's a great leadership opportunity for one of the students. If there is an instructional Aide in the class, that might be an opportunity for them, as well.

2. To get an even smaller class size, consider formalizing a group rotation format that will allow you to meet with groups of 10 (in the event that you have a class size of 30) so that you can target the needs of individual students. This will definitely require another adult for support, so it's most appropriate in classes where you have a collaborating teacher or a collaborating aide in the room. But here's how it would work:

The class would be divided into three groups. Group make-up, of course, is up to the teacher. It can be by ability level, language challenges, or heterogenous depending on the goal of the lesson. 

The class period would be split in half with groups rotating at the halfway point in the class. 

The whole class would be set up on a rotation that would look like this:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Monday
Group Red	Teacher A Teacher B	Independent Teacher A	Teacher B Independent	Teacher A Teacher B	Independent Teacher A	Teacher B Independent
Group Blue	Independent Teacher A	Teacher B Independent	Teacher A Teacher B	Independent Teacher A	Teacher B Independent	Teacher A Teacher B
Group Yellow	Teacher B Independent	Teacher A Teacher B	Independent Teacher A	Teacher B Independent	Teacher A Teacher B	Independent Teacher A

So for the Red group, the first half of class on Monday would be spent in 20-25 minutes of direct instruction with Teacher A. At the halfway point in the class, they would move to Teacher B for some guided independent practice of the concept just taught. For the Blue group, they would start out Monday working on, perhaps, a computer program like Study Island or Fastt Math. Then, they would go to direct instruction with Teacher A. For the Yellow group, they would start out with Teacher B for the first half of the class and then go to the independent assignment for the second half of the class.

Some thoughts/ideas:
*.This rotation is set up so that every seventh instructional day is an assessment day, and then the teacher can reassign groups based on student need. 
*. The role of Teacher B may be intervention. It may be language instruction. It may be upping the ante for the students who seem to be breezing through the concept. That's part of the cool part of this rotation. 
*. Getting the students used to the rotation/having the grouping and the rotations posted on the classroom wall is key to the success of this idea. Otherwise, too much instructional time will be wasted in procedures. 

Vocabulary Relay...a Friday wrap-up activity

This week, I wanted to close the door, ignore the lost top of my desk, turn off the phone, and shut off the email. I finally got to Friday. Second period. And I was there. My class was wrapping up a grammar-based unit on comparative and superlative adjectives, and I needed a closing activity. Vocab relay. 

We had a set of adjectives that we had been studying as a class, so I took the pictures that were representative of those adjectives and made three copies of each picture. Each adjective was marked with an A, C, or S. A=Adjective. C=Comparative. S=Superlative. And then we took the pictures and mixed them up on three different tables in the back of the classroom. By the time we were done, there were a total of 69 words for the students to consider. In addition to mixing up the pictures, we also mixed up the numbers assigned to each picture. So on any given table with 23 numbers on it, a group might have 2, 38, 47, etc.

Students were divided into three teams at the front of the room. One person was chosen by each team to be a writer for the first round.  The other team members were designated as runners. (The writer would change in each subsequent round.)

The game would be played in four rounds of five minutes per round. Each team was assigned to a table for each round. This prevented traffic jams and kept the students focused. After the first three rounds of being assigned to a particular table, the groups had the fourth round to run free to any table.

Rules were simple:

• Students had to be back in their seats at the time that the bell on the timer rang.
• Students had to work in English.
• Only the writer could write. Other students in the group could not take the pencil (or an eraser) to correct.

I've used this activity before in several different ways, but this was the first time I'd done it with this vocabulary. As I was going around the back of the room making up the master list, I became acutely aware of all of the layers of thinking that had to go on in order to have success. The mixed up numbers required that I remember one thing. The vocabulary word itself required that I come up with another. And then the label A, C, or S required that I determine the proper spelling for the word even if I knew what the base word was. And I was just making the master list. My students had to figure all of that out and then go back and report it to someone else who was desperately trying to write it all down. 

After we played the four running rounds, I gave them four minutes in their small groups to check and correct their papers. 

Wrap-up: I took their group papers and checked them. I made a copy of each group's paper for each student in the group, and I gave those back out to the students with the incorrect responses marked. Then, individual students went back to the tables and corrected the work that they had missed during the game. This gave me a chance to see who was still overly reliant on their vocabulary notebook. 

A few great things:

The language generated by this activity is awesome. When the students are under pressure from the clock to communicate with one another, the target language is not just the vocabulary from the back of the room but also the language of negotiation with a writer who is trying to understand what they are trying to communicate.

It's a great assessment piece without the students feeling the pressure of formal assessment. After watching my students go through all the rounds, I knew who understood the grammar construction intellectually, and I knew who understood it and could use it orally. I also knew who only got the basic vocabulary and did not yet have the comparative/superlative concept. 

The kinesthetic side of things made for an awesome Friday morning activity. 

Schema Activation...and a little luck

We had CLIMBS day 4 on Thursday of this week, and it's all about schema activation in order to get the students to better connect with the content. There are three components to schema activation: developing vocabulary, building background, and linking concepts to prior learning. We hit the afternoon after a lot of conversation in the morning, and I put a slide up asking participants in the workshop to discuss ways to activate a student's schema related to the topic of probability in math class.

People talked in their table groups, and we came back together and came up with a healthy list of vocabulary that the students might need in order to be able to access this content. The problem, though, was that we hadn't come up with any activities that might help them to connect. I asked about that again, and crickets filled the room. Well, no, the sound of crickets filled the room. Well, maybe the sound of crickets chirping just filled my head. But the table conversations had all revolved around the vocabulary, it seems, but not around linking to prior learning or building background.

I suggested that we might consider the fact that different cultures view the concept of "luck" differently, and that might be a good jumping off place for activities. But I didn't really have a well-developed plan for responding to my own question, and that's a no-no in presenting. Sorry, friends.

So, of course, I've been stewing about it all weekend. I came up with these activities that I might use to start a unit on probability in math class:

1. Anticipatory Guide: put together a series of statements that students have to agree or disagree with related to luck and probability. Have them make choices and discuss with a partner before coming back to a classroom discussion to share out as a group.

2. Writing round robin: Have students write for three minutes on a time that they felt that they were lucky or unlucky and why they think that the luck/lack thereof occurred. Students can all share in a group of four, and then the instructor can ask each group to share out one story from their table.

3. Previewing video: Put together a video where a  hand is drawing colored marbles out of a bag. Stop the video. Ask students to work with a partner to make predictions about what color they think will come out of the bag next and why. Ask students to narrate the video without sound for their partner. Then, come together as a class and talk about the predictability of the next marble.

4. Have students read this article from Wikipedia. Make it a jigsaw so that each person has to report back to their group on the part of the article that they have read.

The idea is to have a four-skills activity that requires students to NOT work solo, to make connections to the content before having to wrestle with it, and to give the class a common language base from which to work. I'd like to give one of these a whirl, but I feel like probability is a ways off in the class I'm teaching this year. Any takers out there?

What worked today...what didn't.

"Mrs. Bowman, you are my people!" That's what one of my students said to me today when I tried to redirect him to question the people in his group instead of me by saying, "I don't know, buddy. I'm not in your group. Ask your people." There comes a really cool point in every school year when the language of many of my students has developed to the point that they can be intentionally funny. Love it. The other day, I asked someone to do something, and another student chimed in, "Me, too!", and a third chimed in, "Me, three!" And the whole class laughed. How cool is that?

After having read Walqui's book, I have started to think more about how to develop group interaction in the tasks I design for the class and how to mix in content instruction with language accuracy and language fluency. I also want to do my best to draw on all four skills during every class day in a very intentional way.

Some things that worked really well today:

Reinforcement of the content vocabulary: Students started studying the content vocabulary words (precipitation, evaporation, condensation, etc.) yesterday. I was surprised when even my strongest students weren't able to pronounce the vocabulary in any recognizable way. Hmmmm. So what worked? I found a song on the water cycle on a video, and I printed out the lyrics for the tune with the exception of the content words. I left those as blanks in the work, and the students listened on their individual computers.  The fact that it was a song made it easy for the students to sing along, and by the end of the activity, I had nearly perfect pronunciation of all the vocabulary words. Not so original, but it worked today.

Here's the water cycle song. It's not on youtube. That would go in the list of things that didn't work well today. YouTube wasn't working at school this morning, so I needed to find the video elsewhere. Slight panic.

Reinforcement of pronunciation: Found this app, Songify on Daniel Bemiss' blog. After the kids did the listening exercise (and singing exercise, really...wish I could have caught the off-key singing. Nothing is better than off-key singing in a room full of kids wearing headphones), they hopped on the iPads. This app allows users to read up to sixty seconds of text, and it converts it to a rap/r&b/"I'm so not cool that I don't even know the style of music" song. So the students got to listen to themselves reading the first stanza of the song from the video into their iPads. Pretty darn cool. (Free app, too!)

Production of academic language: In our afternoon task, I put the key vocabulary from the unit on the boards around the room. In their small groups, students were directed to write three sentences on the board that were related to the content vocabulary. They were supposed to produce something original. Then we rotated through and each group had to work on the next board. Below is a picture of what the three groups produced on one board:

Cool stuff about this activity? No notes. So the kids did all the negotiating in oral English to produce these sentences. No teacher intervention. There's some serious content vocabulary happening here! My favorite thing is the thinking beyond the class-delivered definitions. Gotta love the sentence about the bicycle!

One thing that didn't work well today:

Grouping: It's important to be intentional in grouping, and the groups I put together for the afternoon didn't work as I wanted them to. One had a funky boy/girl dynamic going on. And another had a girl who seemed to have the marker in my hand every time I turned around. Must remember to front-load activities with a little bit of a caveat to ensure everyone writes.

Next up: CLIMBS day 4 tomorrow. Version 3.0. Every time we run this workshop, we run it differently. Same content, different methods. I'm kind of fired up about tomorrow.

Language & Literacy website

Have you seen www.jeffzwiers.com?

If not, you should. Click on his "Resources" page, and you'll find an unbelievable number of resources for teaching all learners. He has a lot there on scaffolding academic language for ELLs. And he has a lot on sentence frames.

If teachers could get a little bit of training in how to use this information, it would help all learners in their classes.

Sentence frames + text to table

My class has had a science focus for the week: plants. Our language focuses (or foci for you Latin geeks out there) in addition to the vocabulary of plants (photosynthesis, germination, pollination) has been the language of comparison. I also wanted the kids to learn these "academic" words and be able to use them in conversation: diagram, label, match, title.  So we've asked students to understand what we called "both" sentences and "but" sentences when talking about plants. Yep, it was Venn diagram week in class.

The point, though, is to share here two things. First, sentence frames are a really, really, really useful tool for ELLs. And there seems to be some confusion about what sentence frames are. So here's what they are not: fill-in-the-blank sentences. A FITB sentence has one response. _______ is the President of the United States is a FITB. We only have one president, and you can only put one name in that blank for it to be correct. A sentence frame provides the language structure for an ELL to use. And while it might be context-specific, there should be multiple uses for that frame. A good example from a recent geography lesson in my class: _____________ is to the ____________ of __________. So students would fill in the first and last blank with place names and the middle blank with a directional word. "Kentucky is to the north of Tennessee." It has multiple uses for the kids, and the "glue" words don't change. "Mrs. B's class is to the left of Mr. White's class." "My locker is to the right of Aung Sung's."

Second, I wrote earlier about the text to table to text lesson, and I want to share the progression of that here. So here are a series of pictures from this week:

Working on some germination action here.

The lesson I'm showing pictures from is somewhere near the middle of the unit. The students had already studied a lot about the parts of a a plant and what each part does for the plant. We had also started comparing various plants (to practice using those plant parts) among other things. 

I wanted the students to be able to work with a more complex text by the end of the week, but we started with a sentence-level reading. Students had a blank Venn diagram, and I went through a text and pulled out sentences like, "Apples and peaches grow on trees." or "An apple has many seeds. A peach has one big seed." I then took those individual sentences and put them onto paper where I underlined the key text for them--the text that they would need to transfer to their Venn diagram paper. 

Above, you can see two of my students working on one of those sentence papers. They had to find the appropriate phrase and decide where it belonged on the paper--in the outer circles that indicated that the fruits are "different" or in the inner circle that indicates that they are the "same." 

After students had collected the phrases from the individual sentences in the back of the room, they had to turn those phrases back into comparison sentences using these sentence frames:

Both ___________ and _______________ _________________.

____________ _______________, but ____________ ____________.

Both apples and peaches grow on trees.

Apples have many seeds, but peaches have one big seed. 

Yes, this is close to what they had seen on the papers in the back of the room, but remember that they had only put the phrases on their paper--not the complete sentences. And the sentences were not always worded so closely to the sentence frames. So this was requiring them to re-think the information that they had seen in the back of the room. 

Later in the week, they read this two-page text:

Longman Science

And the kids put together this Venn diagram with minimal support from me (yes, the handwriting is mine--they told me what to write):

And then they took the information from the diagram and turned that into a paragraph comparing animals and plants.

One final use for sentence frames in the unit wrap-up for the week is shown below. I gave the students a list of options for the first blank because I wasn't sure they would know how to say what all we had done over the course of the week, and then I left the second blank open for them to fill in. All the students were able to produce responses that were strong and even used some of the academic language that we had studied this week. 

Scaffolding the Academic Success of Adolescent English Language Learners by Walqui and van Lier

The first chapter of this book is called, "A Pedagogy of Promise" followed by the subheading, "Helping Students Become What They Are Not Yet", and the text delivers both theories and methods based on this sense of optimistic pedagogy. While the focus of the title of the text is on English Language Learners, teachers of all students should consider implementing the instructional design outlined by the authors.

Vygotsky fans will get excited about this book because his theories are the root for the practice. The density of the first chapter made me want to read it twice and furiously take notes in the margin (although I had borrowed the copy, so I couldn't!). I'm a geek for theory. If you aren't a geek for theory, though, the first three chapters should be enough to convince you that the "sage on the stage" mentality of old-school teaching is not the most effective way to reach students.

The last three chapters of the book are dedicated to the actual practice of what they call "QTEL" or Quality Teaching for English Learners. These practices are rooted in these five principles quoted from p. 81 of the text (my computer is not letting me put quotes where I want them):

• Sustain academic rigor in teaching English learners
• Hold high expectations in teaching English learners
• Engage English learners in quality teacher and student interactions
• Sustain a language focus in teaching English learners
• Develop a quality curriculum for teaching English learners

 For me, personally, there were several lightbulb moments in the text. I need to spend more time in my class on the quality of my student interactions. I always struggle in that aspect. I want the kids to work together on tasks, but that is often reduced to one student doing the work and other students then copying from that one student. This book suggests several task-designs that would support more positive student participation.

I need to focus on giving students multiple opportunities to focus on both accuracy and fluency in the language. I use sentence frames a lot in my class, but that often limits what the students produce. And then there is a "right" or a "wrong" moment that doesn't support them thinking on their own. So I need to move beyond my focus on accuracy to giving them multiple opportunities for expression.

I also need to up my game in terms of academic rigor for the students. If I can get the first two pieces above in order, then I can certainly increase the rigor for the students. The expectations are high in my class. Often, the academic rigor is high, as well. But I think I can be doing more in terms of using the students' background to improve their opportunities to interact with higher-level thinking activities and to solicit the language needed to work through those activities.

There is a very clear, three-step design to units of study. The first step is to prepare the learners, the second is the scaffolding of their interaction with a text, and the third is in extending the ideas of the text. (That's the part that I personally loved!) Lessons are objective based. There are plenty of examples of "real-life" teachers using these methods, and teachers should walk away with some ideas that they can use in their classroom immediately.

From text to table to text

It's funny when I start doing something in my class that I think is really working, and I get really excited about it, and I want to write about it, and then I realize that someone else already has. The cool thing is that the people who did, Levine and McCloskey say that what I'm doing is a best practice. The not as cool thing is that if I'd just finished reading their book that I've been toting around with me forever, I would have figured this out a lot sooner and been doing it in my classes.

So here's the thing that's been working in classes for us in the last couple of weeks (that I now know is a Best Practice (I like labeling that with capital letters because it makes it seem much more official). I'll try to post some pictures of student work if I remember to pull out the camera when I get back to work on Tuesday.

I call it "from text to table to text." And here's the thing. I have to preface this by saying that I hate graphic organizers. I don't hate them as a teaching tool, but I hate them for my own personal use. I skip over graphs and diagrams in books that I'm reading. I can't remember the last time I willfully pulled out a paper with a bunch of funny boxes on it to help organize my thinking (and I'm wondering how many of you do?) or my understanding of a reading. Yet, they seem to work with my kids. Sigh.

The text: I choose a text related to the topic we are studying and at the appropriate language level for the students. Two examples this week were a text on symbols of the United States government and the branches of the United States government.

The table: I design a graphic organizer that will correlate with the information in the text but that also requires the students to add their own thoughts into the mix. This is important. I want the kids to not only regurgitate the information from a text that they have read, but I want them to make a personal connection with it. For both of the above examples, the students had to find information in the text to fill out the chart. For the branches of government text, they had to tell me who is in the branch, what the branch does, how many people are in the branch, and where the branch is (which building). For the student part of the mix, I asked them to think about something that we had done in class that was like the duties of that branch, and I gave them a sentence starter so that they could show me they understood the connection. So, for example, we had in our table, "The Legislative Branch makes laws." I gave them the sentence starter, "In our class, we were like the legislative branch when we ____________." and had the kids fill in the rest from an activity that we had done that week.

The text again: Once the kids have filled in their table from the text, we then use a paragraph form to turn their table back into writing. For the branches of government activity, I modeled the first paragraph for them using the information from my chart on the executive branch. Then, I had the students walk me through the second branch together using that form. Then, the students had to take the information from their chart and the paragraph form to independently practice creating their own paragraph.

So it's a Best Practice. Good for me. Better for our students, though, that we are finding a way to get them to do extended academic writing despite the fact that they are level 1/2 writers.

The end of one year runs into the beginning of another...

Funny how that works. We have been out of school for two weeks. I'm not sure what it is that is preventing me from shifting into summer vacation mode, but my brain refuses to power down. Things I'm wrestling with right now:

• A change in leadership. The principal whom I absolutely adore and admire is retiring as of June 30th, and I was on the committee to select his replacement. That went well, and I'm really excited about the person that we have taking over the helm. I am interested to see what direction the upcoming year will take for our school. (And I will miss a person whom I have come to consider a friend.) Also, the ESL district boss (I don't know a better way to put it...she has so many jobs, but in my world that's her role) who has been an amazing person to work for is retiring at the end of July. I have no idea who will be trying to fill her shoes, but there will possibly be some changes in the coming year. (And I will miss another person whom I admire greatly and have come to consider a friend.) 
• A change in staffing. My friend and fellow ESL teacher is headed out on an adventure to China for at least the next two years. Our enrollment is up. So we are hiring not one but two ESL teachers to work in the building next year. And while historically that end of the building has been separate from what I'm doing on my end of the building, I'm going to have to be more involved in that other classroom next year. I'm excited about the possibilities.
• KTIP. I'm going to be trained this summer to be a resource teacher for KTIP. It's a Kentucky program to help first-year teachers reflect on their teaching practices and determine if they have the tools to be successful in the classroom. I went through it a few years ago. This upcoming year, I think I'm going to be a resource teacher for one of the new ESL teachers. 
• Summer training. We are doing a training for our whole staff on working with ELL students and making appropriate modifications on July 28 and 29 at our school. This is on my mind ALL the time. I have been doing a similar training at the district level for the last two years, but I want to do something outstanding for our teachers. I hope to inspire them to work with the new ESL teachers to better support our ELLs.
• Technology. The ipads and ipods are always on my mind in terms of how to best use them. I didn't get a lot of the info off of them for the summer for storage, and I have to figure out the best way to store the videos that my students made before cleaning those off for next year's kids. We are also about to start designing our own web pages as teachers in the district, and I'm excited for that. I have a class blog, but I'd really like to have more that is student friendly. So as soon as I get the green light, I'm going to start working on a class web page this summer. 
• CLIMBS. I am hoping that with the change in leadership we will continue to offer this at the district level. I LOVE doing that training even though it's really stressful. I love the challenge of it, and I have enjoyed revising it again and again to every time I've worked on it. I love working with teachers from other schools. 
• National Board Certification. I'm doing the Take One version of that this year. That's just one part of the four part National Board process. I'm excited about it, but I know it will be a time commitment. I'm not worried about it... it's just sitting there in the back of my head. 
• Random thinking. Revising my units for the beginning of the school year. Doing work with System 44 to improve comprehension for my students. Painting a wall in my classroom that always gets marked up with pens and pencils. Sharing the technology with the new teachers (I have to learn to play nice in the sandbox.) Why the heck can't KYTESOL get their act together and post their call for proposals on the website? Getting involved with changing the testing system for ELLs. 

I guess that's it for this morning. No deep thoughts here. Just a dumping ground for the way my brain is working this summer. All this thinking, but I don't think I'm getting a lot done. Time for a second cup of coffee. 

Ipod Use Number 2

Unbelievable that I haven't posted in a month. Unbelievable that that is the first sentence I choose to post in a month. But it has been an insane month. In that month, though, I have found multiple uses for the iPod in the language learning classroom.

Idea number 2... Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt
The kids had a list of something like 40 vocabulary words related to geography tostudy, and we had photos in the class representing those 40 words. The kids had duplicate mini photos in their vocab notebooks to study. So after a night of studying, I put the list of 40 words on the overhead cam for the students. I had each of them randomly choose any 15 words from that master list in any order and put them on a piece of paper.

Prior to school starting, I snuck into the classroom and hid the 40 vocab pictures all over the room. Taped to random places.

I then collected the kids' lists and redistributed them to different kids. The task? Each student had to go on a scavenger hunt to find the pictures of the 15 words on their list. They had to take photos of the images with the iPod touch. The twist? They had to do it in the order that the words were listed on their lists.

Wild. The kids had a great time. And it forced them to really think about the words in print versus the words as images. And when the quickest kid in the class discovered that he had missed picture number seven, he had to delete his last eight photos and go back at it again. It was a fun, fun challenge to see who could get done first.

Inventing the wheel... again...and again...and again...

Through several levels of miscommunication, I thought I was going to have a visitor today. I did a ton of prep last night (which I would have/should have/needed to have done anyway) for an activity that I thought would be at least interesting to watch. My visitor was a no-show, but the activity went well anyway. It was the classic information gap activity with a load of scaffolding; the topic was states of matter. The good thing is that the activity was a good one, and it's one I'll use again next year. The not-so-good thing was that it took A LOT of work to get ready. And after I had gotten it ready, I realized that I'm not doing enough of this kind of speaking activity with my students. Must do more.

But where does inventing the wheel again come in? I'm wondering if I'm doing that. Am I missing something? I've done a lot of searches, but I'm not finding enough stuff out there that integrates content and academic English in a way that would work for a group of mostly semi-literate middle schoolers. Yes, I'm looking for a very specific curriculum. Maybe I should just write one and then sell it. There's an idea.

It would have to integrate technology. I haven't seen any sort of curriculum that successfully does that. I got my hands on an iPad today, and the technology is incredibly promising.