We are so fortunate to be teaching in an era when low tech and high tech options are both the route to engaging opportunities for our students. Below are two links that are relevant to our work.
Made With Code- similar to an Hour of Code, this web site (works on tablets, too), allows students to work with basic coding to create. I had Carolyn try it out and watched her push through some frustration and double back when things didn't align the way she wanted them. That is growth mindset in action!
Then there is this fabulous reminder and guide from Mindshift, KQED's educational blog. It is all about how to provide meaningful reflection opportunities for our students, beyond "How did you think it went?". I know I often feel at a loss for how to get kids to articulate what they learned and what they did, beyond "It was great. That was cool." The infographics on this piece are stellar!
Phonemic awareness has long been identified as an important foundational skill for successful literacy. Phonemes are simply units of sound in our spoken language. So being aware of them reflects a child's ability to break words apart into phonemes, put phonemes together to create words, hear rhyming sounds, etc. All done without a child writing or even needing to see print.
An example:
Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness in which listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can differentiate meaning. Separating the spoken word "cat" into three distinct phonemes, /k/, /æ/, and /t/, requires phonemic awareness. (Wikipedia, 2016).
As we move through our days in TK, K, First, and Second grade, it is important to teach to phonemic awareness skills and give students a chance to "make and break" words orally/aurally.
Below, is a link to numerous classroom activities to boost your phonemic awareness time!
Fortunately for teachers at Ford, we already engage in many of these practices, so making sure our lessons have this element is unnecessary. What we can do, is fine tune our definitions and make our practices match.
After a quick dip into the research on this topic, "rigor" became the newest buzzword in 2010. Does that mean we should reject the idea as yet another part of the pendulum swing? I don't think so, and I'll tell you why.
For a long time, we as educators lamented the "sit and get" nature of teaching that fill in the bubble testing pushed us into utilizing. Many of us, especially here at this school, worked hard to keep critical thinking, project based learning, and rich discussions a part of our daily practices.
Utilizing the concept of rigor (which is really about open ended and critical thinking, NOT more assignments, or even "harder" ones), especially when paired with relevance (how does what we are doing speak to our students' lives?) and relationship (are you working to have a deep connection to all our students?) makes our teaching more powerful and the students' learning worth their time and investment.
There are numerous ways to develop rigor in our plans, because the first step in making it happen is creating a plan. In your lesson plans, build in time for critical thinking, discussion and pondering. Our students don't need to be "busy" every second. Asking students to design something, connect multiple issues, critique their own or others' thinking all attempt to add rigor to a lesson. Doing these things takes time, and that is okay.
One powerful way to add rigor to our classrooms is to present different points of view around similar situations and ask the students to consider those viewpoints before designing a solution to the problem.
Here is a six minute podcast on the debate over the semantics of the word "rigor":
Here is a 15 minute presentation from ICLE on Rigor and Relevance:
This is an awesome example of a rigorous 3rd grade math session!:
In an effort to help our students increase their capacity to stick with a problem and articulate their thinking while doing so, we can engage in daily Number Talks.
Some suggestions:
Number talks should happen daily. I incorporated them into my daily morning routine. When lesson planning, I simply wrote in the problem I wanted to use each day.
Number talks can be done with kids on the carpet, or at their desks. Even the big kids do like coming to sit together and it facilitates "elbow partner" conversations.
Number talk problems DO NOT need to match your current math curriculum. In other words, even though I might be doing fractions, I am not going to offer that as a number talk problem, because the purpose of number talks is to allow students to make and break apart numbers using simple operations.
Wow! After nearly 24 years in a classroom, I will be moving to an office and a change in jobs. This is both daunting and exciting.
My mission statement as I approach this new opportunity is:
It is my mission to support excellence in teaching and joy in learning. I believe that all children can learn and all teachers are worthy of respect, dignity and confidentiality. I will support my colleagues in taking risks, finding flow, developing collaborative skills and common visions. I will support the systems in place in our school community that allow learners and teachers to stand in their truth and be who they are. I am ready to sit next to you, not across from you and keep problems in front of us, not between us. I believe that when we work shoulder to shoulder, in the best interests of others, we will always come out the better for it.
