Turning it over to them - Success in the making!

image used from flickr

I mentioned in my last post about my struggle with too much social/not enough learning focus happening in our classroom and that I'd share what we're trying out. After 2 weeks down, we've been able to celebrate some success!

Here's what we're trying:

1) We identified as a class the three main behavior areas we struggle in: on task, voice level, and caring/respect toward others.

2) We made a rubric to score these behaviors.

• I divided the class into three groups and they each started with what a secure classroom might look like, then went up from there for exceeding and down for beginning and developing.
• Then we came back together as a class to share out and make sure the language and numbers matched up for the whole rubric. 

3) We identified the 3 key times in the day that students struggle most: math, Words Their Way, and independent reading.

4) I chose two students per day to assess the class during those times. Those two students had a quick discussion after each of those subject areas, came to an agreement on how to score the class, and reported their assessment to the class. We did this for four days and then looked at the data and set a goal.

5) I compiled the data by assigning one point to a beginning score, up to 4 points for an exceeding score. The first four days, students scored 65/144. Many were able to see that it was below 50%, and that an average of 50% would be all developing scores. Then we set a goal for the next four days. The class agreed that we should shoot for 50%, so 72/144. Different students continued to assess and report to the class each day.

6) At the end of the four days (yesterday), I compiled the rubrics again. Good news! They exceeded their goal! They got 78/144 - 54%! We set a new goal for next 5 days. Students decided on this goal and are aiming for a little above 50%. We'll see how it continues.

Here are a few questions I would ask someone if I read about this. If you have more, feel free to comment and I will get back to you!


Where did this idea come from? I shared my struggles with one of my building administrators. She came in to observe and noticed I was working a lot harder than the students. We sat down and brainstormed some ideas, and this is the one that stuck and felt like the responsibility was being passed over to the students.

Are we seeing classroom behavior improvement? I'd say somewhat. There are still areas we struggle with that aren't necessarily during the three times students assess with the rubrics, but we can't do it all, all the time. Plus, we've just been doing this for two weeks!

Are students being honest with their assessments? Yes. I even noticed that when a few of my more off task students had their day to score the rubric, their behavior was better because they were focusing on their work and the rubric.

Why do I have students do the assessing? It turns the responsibility over to them. The idea that the students should be working harder than the teacher wasn't happening before this. I was the nag, the reminder, even the babysitter at times. Now they students get an honest reflection about their behavior from their peers and some of the pressure is off me.

Doesn't this take a lot of time? To begin with, yes. It took us a few hours as a class to come up with the rubric. I have to copy rubrics and plan who is going to assess the class. We have to take a minute to report at the end of each of the three subjects, but things that are worthwhile do take time. If this helps the learners in my classroom focus more, it's totally worth it!

Struggles

image used from flickr

It's nearing Spring Break...which means it's getting closer to the end of the year...which means my fifth graders are preparing to become sixth graders/middle schoolers. Lately we've been struggling as a class to put learning time ahead of socializing time. I know it's something so many teachers struggle with and this time of year seems to be prime time for it.

Teachers have a variety of different strategies they try to get kids to stop talking and focus on learning. From taking away recess minutes to erasing letters of a random word on the board to having them put visual reminders on their desks to who knows what else.

My biggest struggle has been how to get the students to intrinsically monitor themselves instead of me being the external reminder voice that feels like a broken record at the end of the day.

I'm going to be experimenting with something over the next few weeks in an attempt to turn it over to them. It's something I've talked over with some colleagues, and I'm going to give it a whirl. Students at this age are very aware of what appropriate behaviors look like in the classroom, but sometimes just become oblivious to what they're doing in the moment. I hope to come back here to share how it went, and maybe it can be something you can try! So, come back in a few weeks and I'll post about it then.

How do you help your students internalize the importance of the work they need to do? I know socializing is necessary. I know it's important, but how do you balance it with the learning priorities in your classroom? I'd love to hear some things you have tried. What has worked? What has flopped?

 

Posted with Blogsy

The Checklist

I've come upon a new way (for me) of assessing/having students self assess writing this year. It isn't mind blowing by any means, and it isn't working 100%. But, I would say I'm getting a lot better quality products this year. The first writing unit we did was on Personal Narratives. It really just hit me after a conversation with our instructional coach that this is non-fiction writing. I mean, duh, yeah, but I hadn't thought of it that way before for some reason. She found  a great resource that had basically mini-lessons for each day to complete the whole piece with quality including a short mentor text that we referred back to often.

As we went mini-lesson by mini-lesson, we began creating a checklist of what a good personal narrative looks like. I used this instead of a rubric to assess their pieces. I also had them, after the fact, go back and assess themselves using the same checklist. I realizes that many of them weren't using the chart paper checklist as a guide, and missed some parts, but after looking it over with their own checklist in hand, they were able to provide a more honest picture of their writing. Unfortunately, I did this after they had submitted their final copy... I really should have allowed them to go back and fix mistakes then and there, but as life sometimes goes, we were in a hurry and part way into their next assignment. I should have slowed down, but I didn't.

So, the next writing unit came along: book and movie reviews. Again we looked at some mentor texts, had mini-lessons, and created another great checklist. THIS time, I got a little smarter. I printed the checklist twice on a piece of paper and asked them to assess themselves on the top checklist before they submitted their piece to the blog. This allowed them to catch things they'd left out and go back and fix it before my eyes landed there for the "final" assessment. Much better this time! Still, I had some friends who were in a hurry themselves, realized they didn't have everything, and didn't take the time to fix it.  (You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink....) Hopefully next time I can help those friends see the benefits to doing that.

Below you can gaze at the checklist for the reviews.

Maybe this will work with your classroom! Enjoy!


-->

___________________________________’s Book/Movie Review

My Self-Assessment

I included:

o   information about the author/director and the audience

o   a catchy title

o   an introduction that hints at my opinion

o   a quality summary

o   at least two strengths or weaknesses with details and examples to support them

o   a satisfying conclusion

o   my voice – it sounds like I wrote this

I checked for:

o   capital letters

o   correct spelling

o   conjunctions with a comma before them to make compound sentences

I think I did well with:

Mrs. Goerend’s Turn:

You included:

o   information about the author/director and the audience

o   a catchy title

o   an introduction that hints at your opinion

o   a quality summary

o   at least two strengths or weaknesses with details and examples to support them

o   a satisfying conclusion

o   your voice – it sounds like you wrote this

I also noticed:

o   capital letters

o   correct spelling

o   conjunctions with a comma before them to make compound sentences

Comments:

All They Wanted

I write this more in shame than anything, but in a hope you can learn from it. This is probably common sense to most of you, but sharing this failure might click with someone.

I was attending the Solution Tree PLC conference in St. Louis earlier this summer. I attended many sessions on assessment because it's something that has been an interest of mine for a while. I have knowledge of many good formative assessment practices. I'm big on the retake and standards-based assessment and reporting.

This past year, and many years before it, students would ask the same old question, "How long does it need to be?" I would come back with the response, "I interpret that question as meaning, 'How short can it be to get by, Mrs. G?'" Sadly, some students caught on to this and would give that response to students before I could even give it. I realized got a big slap in the face after attending a session at the conference (I can't remember which) that all the students wanted were more examples of good writing. They really aren't asking to see how short it can be, well maybe a couple are, but most really want to know so they can do their best!

Writing is not one of my strong suits. I have allowed students to fix things and resubmit their paper, and I blog with my students so they have a larger audience for me. One thing that really hit home with me at the PLC conference was students' needs for many examples of writing that meets, does not meet, exceeds the standard.  I was giving them a rubric with descriptors and sometimes one good and one poor model to look at, but many weren't able to transfer to what that would look like in their own writing. They need more. They need more models posted. I even have a sweet little box called "Mentor Texts," for their writing, but I need to be more explicit with its use.

So, this is one of many improvements I hope to make this year. After 6 years of teaching, there's never been one year where I say, "I hope next year is an exact repeat of this year." I archived all of my students' blog posts from last year and hope to use them as models for this coming year (names omitted of course).


What are some mistakes you've made in your classroom? How can you take a risk and be transparent about those mistakes to help others learn?

Another lesson from the garden

Spring has sprung around here.  New plants are growing, but this also means there is a lot of clean up to do. Cleaning out of the old plants must happen for the new to grow. This is the same in life - sometimes if we want to try new things, we must clear out old ideas that get in the way.  If we allow the old to protect the new little plants, it shelters them from the cold for a while.  After time though, the old must go for the new to grow.

What sort of cleaning out of ideas or practices are you going to let go so that new ones can grow?

Creative Juices

Lately, if you follow me on Twitter, know me on Pinterest, or are connected with me on Facebook, you  see I haven't been sharing much about education.  More of my time outside of school work has been spent crafting, idea gathering, starting a shop, and sharing about what I'm doing.  My husband never knows what I'm up to.  I will go in the other room, run the sewing machine or hot glue gun for a while, and come back with a creation.  I feel alive!  How can we transfer this feeling to our students who may feel trapped in the day-to-day reading, math, and writing?  What sort of things are you doing to allow your students (or staff, my administrator friends!) to feel alive in their creativity?

Putting it in their words

Kelley Tenkely tweeted this out today, and it totally fit what I was thinking about blogging!

I also wonder why the things we expect our students to know aren't always written in words they can understand.  Students should understand what they are expected to learn, just like I am supposed to understand what I am evaluated on as a teacher. 

Yesterday, we started discussion on our first Essential Learning in reading.  This is the wording that is given on the progress report:

Use text structures to determine main idea when reading text consisting of multiple organizational patterns.

There are some big words in there that some fifth graders might struggle with, so we talked it out.  We read through it, picked out words they knew - like text and main idea - and then took words they weren't sure about - like text structure, determine, conisisting - talked about what we thought they might mean, reworded them, and rewrote the Essential Learning in our own words.

Here's what we came up with:

 
It's not a huge change, but it is written in words that all of my students can read and comprehend.

What are your thoughts?  Should our progress report statements and the Common Core be written in student speak?