Forever in the Middle: Book Reveal

Last month, I shared my search for the perfect book to reach our unit and student needs within our narrative unit. After a surprisingly long search, I finally found a book that met ALL of my criteria! As a reminder, this is what I was looking for:

1. Fantasy genre but not dystopian (we use The Giver in February)
2. Rich in narrative techniques (the students will be studying these techniques and their effects on the readers then emulating them in their own writing)
3. Depth of meaning with layers to explore (what's a book without great discussion?)
4. Appealing to many types of students, especially middle school age appropriate
5. Short enough to read during class time within a 6-8 week time period (the students will not be taking the books home)

The winner is.....
The Star Shepherd

The novel tells the tale of a boy, Kyro, whose father is a Star Shepherd. It is his duty to watch the sky at night then retrieve fallen stars and catapult them back into the sky before morning so they can keep evil spirits away. The problem is that too many stars are falling at once and the evil monsters are beginning to appear at night. Kyro's father goes off to warn the Council and leaves Kyro in charge of the stars. When he doesn't return, it becomes up to Kyro to find a way to essentially save the world. Some topics that will lead to great discussions include expectations of responsibility, loyalty to family and friends, and the power of one.


Student Input
I love giving opportunities for student input so I previewed the book with a few classes before making a final decision. For the preview, I showed a video of the book trailer and then read the first few pages. Following that, I gave a quick book talk while maintaining suspense and without giving any "secrets" away. Then the students answered three quick questions:
1. On a scale of 1-5, how much interest do you have in reading The Star Shepherd?
2. On a scale of 1-5, how much interest did you have in our last class novel?
3. Should next year's classes use The Star Shepherd in place of our last class novel?

The second question gave me a good baseline to compare the first one to. Let's face it: some kids are going to score any book a 1. The results showed that the students liked The Star Shepherd about the same as the novel we used this year as a temporary placeholder (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator) and only 13% of students said they wouldn't like it as a replacement, which is not bad for middle school. Overall, the students found it interesting and were intrigued by the adventure within the story. Some students even asked to borrow the book after I was done sharing it with classes. I think that is a definite sign of success!

I'm happy that I found something that will work for what we need next year and I enjoyed the process.  Also, the experienced challenged me to read books I wouldn't normally pick up and I even ended up falling in love with a couple of them along the way.

Comment below with the last book you read!

Keep the magic alive,

Kandyce Valverde

Kindness Challenge

                              Kindness Challenge

Have you ever engaged in a “challenge” with your students?  If you have, you know that when you make something a challenge or a competition, students will buy into it, excitement will grow, and it becomes easier to practice and teach that skill.  You can leverage that competitive spirit to work on character education.  Character education is something we must teach and cannot ignore. We must find the time to integrate character education into our curriculum to help prepare our students for the world.

Character Education

Character education is a continuous learning process that enables young people and adults to become moral, caring, and responsible individuals. It is a critical part of teaching our youth. The California Department of Education (CDE) clearly emphasizes the importance of incorporating character education into the curriculum here:  https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/yd/ce/charactered.asp

The CDE cites the International Center for Leadership in Education  (ICLE), which has identified 12 guiding principles to teach students for them to have successful relationships and become a vital member of society. The 12 principles are as follows:

•            Adaptability – The ability and willingness to change     
•  Contemplation –To think things through with proper care before taking action
• Courage – Bravery
• Honesty – Truthfulness
• Initiative –To take responsible action on your own, without prompting from others
• Loyalty – Faithfulness
• Optimism – Positive beliefs
• Perseverance – Trying hard and continuously in spite of obstacles and difficulties
• Respect –To show regard for yourself, others, and the world around you
• Responsibility – Accountability for your own actions
• Trustworthiness – Reliability
• Compassion - Kindness

The ICLE emphasizes that these non-cognitive skills must be intertwined into the curriculum “wherever and whenever possible.”

                                                  Kindness Challenges

I know what you’re thinking…something else to squeeze into our teaching day.  But I work on finding creative ways to incorporate this type of learning into my day.  This year I have begun implementing periodic “Kindness Challenges” to work on kindness in the classroom, on the playground, and at home.  The Webster Dictionary defines kindness as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.  I started with defining kindness and giving concrete examples of showing kindness to others. Class meetings, good literature about kindness, and pointing out kind behavior will all teach students about kindness.


In December we did the “10 Days of Kindness” challenge.  
My students were so engaged in the challenge, they asked me every day how they could be kind to each other.  When I would turn over a new number on the challenge, the excitement in my room was apparent.  Each day we would try to build on our actions by completing the current day’s challenge and all the previous days’ challenges.  I could visibly see the compassion grow in my students as they reported how they were showing kindness to each other.  The best part of this challenge was that there were no tangible rewards; it was all intrinsic.  They were learning to be kind for kindness sake!

In January and February, our challenge was to "Fill your hearts with Kindness."  To increase the rigor and tie character education with academics, I decided to connect our latest Kindness Challenge to writing.  Instead of telling me verbally every day how they were kind, I had them write it on a stickie note and keep it in their pencil boxes.  At the end of the week, we did a Kagan Structure called Timed Continuous Round Robin.  The students took all their stickie notes for the week and individually shared verbally to their team how they were kind, one person talking at a time telling one act of kindness, and then the next person sharing and so on.   I set a time limit on this because some students had more pieces of “Kindness Evidence” than others.  After sharing out loud, they made an individual flow map of their three favorite pieces of evidence of kindness, and then they wrote a narrative paragraph about their Kindness for the week. 

We can creatively weave in Character Education, and it is essential to make this a priority in our teaching.  It’s helpful to leverage other areas, such as combining Character Education with Writing; that way you can make the time to fit in these lessons.  It is possible, and the benefits are phenomenal.  After all….It’s TIME TO BE KIND!

With Kindness,

Roni Weink

Read like a Writer: Argumentative Writing Edition Part 1

We all have that "friend" on social media who likes to repost a source with bias information or unreliable sources (especially during campaign season). Each time I see this, I cringe and think how important it is for our students to be knowledgeable about credible sources and bias in the media, which is even more difficult with all the media our students have access to daily. Therefore, teaching students the skill of identifying the components of argumentative writing will be an essential skill for high school and college-level writing and thinking, and being a responsible global citizen (who doesn't spread false information from unreliable sources).  

"Students love discussing and debating their point of view, and it has the capacity to pull in reluctant writers because most students don't have trouble writing about their position on controversial issues." Ryan McCarty

From kindergarten to 5th grade, our students practice with opinion writing. They start in kindergarten with statements like "My favorite food is…" and build upon those skills to 5th grade when they need to "Write their opinion on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information." (CCSS 5th grade standards) Throughout these years, students practice writing their opinions on topics, so they wind up writing things like, "I like how the main character solved his problem in the story because I would solve it the same way." This is an adequate answer because it's their opinion; however, in 6th grade, when the standards change it up on them and take away their "I think…" "I feel…" "I like…" it can be somewhat challenging for them. 

With the roll-out of Learning Targets on my site and my focus on Read Like a Writer, I decided to reflect on how I've introduced argumentative writing in the past. I was particularly interested in why it seemed to be so challenging to my former students. As I backward planned and looked at all the skills needed to be successful at argumentative writing, I began to see why students struggled. Take this substandard, for example: "W.6.1.A Introduce claim(s) and organize the reasons and evidence clearly." First, students need to know what a claim is and how it is different than an opinion. Then they need to understand the purpose of reasons and where they "find" these reasons. Next, they need to know how to use "evidence clearly." Wow, this is a lot to tackle for the 12-year-old brain. I looked at how I would implement this unit in teachable 30 minutes (or so) chunks and wrote out each of my learning targets. This process helped to focus my instruction. 

So we started slowly and purposely.

1. We created common definitions of the vocabulary they'd be hearing me use repeatedly: claim, reasons, clear evidence (here we also defined types of evidence- see #3 below), counterclaim (not a 6th-grade standard), commentary, thesis statement. Learning Target: I can define the vocabulary words needed for argumentative writing. 
2. The next day, we merged reading and writing instruction. I asked my students to identify the author's claim using a mentor text. Then, we built on that using probing questions like how do you know that is the author's claim? That moved us forward to identifying the author's reasons (more on developing reasons in my next blog post). Learning Target: I can identify the author's clear and reasons when reading a mentor text. 
3. The following day we looked at evidence, evidence, and more evidence- Most of my students can identify evidence because they are well versed in pulling evidence from a text when writing a constructive response. To practice with identifying the author's evidence, we used the same mentor text we had been analyzing. I had my students write each piece of evidence on a different post-it. Then with their table groups, they looked for similarities and differences. Next, as a group, they compared the evidence they all found to our notes on evidence and added each post-it to our evidence tree map (chart above). From here, we had a class discussion on how each piece of the author's evidence was relevant and factual. We had a compelling discussion on how we know the evidence is factual (look for reliable sources and experts in that field). Learning Target: I can identify and evaluate an author's use of evidence. 
4. We repeated this process once more with a new mentor text before I assessed their understanding using a completely new text. I was so happy to see that between my two classes, the average was 85% proficient. Learning Target: I can identify and evaluate the author's claim, reasons, and evidence when using a mentor text. 

Next month, I'll explain how we used our work with a mentor text to help my students create their own claims and research evidence on world issues that they are concerned about and want to see changed. Some big things are coming out of these 12-year-old brains, and I'm so proud of them for beginning responsible global citizens.

 Follow along to see how our reading and writing transforms, 

• Jenni Merry 

Building Community Relationships

 We don’t live separately in this world. We are interconnected.

Youth can keep our older residents young and older people have wisdom that can help young people.”

 -Ted Gross, Stadium Place, Baltimore, MD 

In January, my kindergarten team and I reached out to our administration about setting up a community building partnership with a local senior living facility.  After we got the go-ahead, we went to Claremont Place and spoke to their activities director to see what we could do with the residents.  All of the employees we encountered were so thrilled and excited about this opportunity and we felt very welcome.

Claremont Place is about a mile from our school, so it is a walking field trip.  Along our walk, we pass a park, many our of students' homes, a high school, and a cemetery.  These local interests are discussed during our walk, along with addresses on houses, street names, and traffic signs.

Since we have three classes, one class goes each week.  My class was the first.  We went a couple of days before Valentine's Day.  The director had juice and snacks for the students to share with the residents. He also had a craft ready for us to complete.  Each resident and student received a white teddy bear with lots of designs on it.  They were given fabric markers to decorate their bears.

Before we started, the students sat down with residents at the various tables and the adults (me, parent volunteers, the directors) helped facilitate conversation.  We learned one resident was a kindergarten aide along time ago. Another couple originally came from Wales.  One resident told the students that when she was in kindergarten she didn't even know how to write her name!  The conversations were lively at some tables and quiet at others, but I feel in time, relationships will become stronger and more familiar.

The students got to take their bears home with them.  Last week, another class got to make cherry pies with the residents because it was National Cherry Pie Day.  The residents were so grateful for the students coming to visit them and our students were so delighted to take their learning outside the classroom and into their community.

The plan is to go one more time in March to visit for reading.  Then we will invite the residents to come watch our performance of the musical "The Wide Mouthed Frog" in May. Next year, we intend to continue this partnership with our new group of students earlier in the year.  Is there somewhere in your neighborhood where you and your students could implement something like this?

P.S. Our classes take several parent volunteers.  This is key to a successful walking field trip.  We also must complete and turn in a "Field Trip Request" form to the office manager and get approval three weeks ahead of time. This request lists the educational standards for this opportunity.  If you need help in this way to get started, please reach out: erin.grebel@omsd.net.

Here is some more insight: Edutopia, Edutopia 2, Research

Happy Teaching!

Erin Grebel

Stand-Up Hand-up Pair-Up Kagan Structure

We all have those days where the kids just seem unmotivated, bored, and disengaged, which makes our job as teachers much more difficult. Kagan provides many many cooperative learning structures to prevent the above mentioned from happening.  Research shows that when students are engaged, they are learning.  If they're not engaged, then quite simply put, they're not learning.    

One super simple, super fun engagement/cooperative learning strategy that Kagan provides is called, "stand-up hand-up pair-up."  It's such a fun and easy way to get kids up and moving and its a structure that you can start implementing tomorrow!

1) Pose a question.  Whether it be a math problem, or a reading comprehension question, or inquiry question leading into your science lesson. It' best to have the question displayed if possible.  If not, I will repeat it multiple times.

2) Then you play some sort of music to signify its time to move.  I use this timer countdown with music on YouTube: countdown timer, (you can click that link or just google it and there are SEVERAL other options).  I tell them to stand behind their chairs and take their whiteboard/marker, their book, or paper pencil (whatever materials they may need to answer the question).  Depending on the question, no materials may be needed at all.

3) When I pause the music, the kids freeze and immediately raise their hand in the air.  They then have to partner with the person NEAREST to them and form a "partner pyramid" with their hands (this is just where they basically high five each other but hold it there in the air).

4) Any hands still raised in the air (means they don't have a partner) can look around for another hand in the air who doesn't have a partner, and thus they can easily find each other and partner up.

5) I will then delegate which partner shares first (either through use of the Kagan software "who's up?") or I'll just say something simple like "the partner whose birthday is up next shares first."  

6) You can be done after the kids share, OR you can have the kids mix a few more times so that they get to share their answers with multiple partners.  This is usually what I have them do.  The more partners they share with, the more opportunities they have to practice speaking, in addition to hearing more diverse ideas from their peers.

Not only is this a SUPER quick, and efficient collaborative learning structure, this is also REALLY great support for your English Learners.  This not only provides talk time, but you're also supporting them by giving them think time (time to process), time to verbalize their thoughts, and hear thoughts from their peers.  This is why it's best to display the question and/or sentence frames when applicable to further support your English Learner students. 

Furthermore, it gets the kids up and moving which then ensures that they're thinking and learning. It's easy, it's fun, and it supports ALL learners at ALL levels in your classroom! 

Collaboratively Learning,

Megan Brown

megan.brown@omsd.net

Thinking to Infinity and Beyond

Thinking to Infinity and Beyond

One would think that questioning would be easy for a child because as they begin to explore the world they're living in, all they want to do is ask questions! When my daughter Sophia was 2 years old, I remember thinking when is she going to stop asking questions?! At home, in the car, at a family gathering, at the grocery store, going to bed... you get the idea, she was asking questions everywhere! There were times I wanted to stop answering her questions because I wanted to move on with my daily duties, but then realized she was being inquisitive to acquire more knowledge as she also learned how to start and maintain conversations. Don't stop your kids from asking questions.

                      A child that questions is learning!

Recently, I was reading an interesting Mindshift Article from KQED.org that was written about four years ago. The research found that student engagement along with questioning was dropping at an alarming rate. The article stated, "It doesn't help that in many classrooms, there is little encouragement-and almost no teaching of questioning." Then went on to Tony Wagner's (an expert in residence at Harvard's Innovation Lab) findings, reporting that in his observation of classrooms, the message from teachers was, "We don't have time for student questions-because that will take time away from the number of answers I have to cover." The article also discussed the idea, as kids get older they learn more and feel less of a need to ask questions, especially in fear of asking a "dumb" question and not being the "cool" thing to do.

I understand time is our enemy. I feel it is our life's enemy in general. I, personally, don't want to take time to a lot of things throughout my days to enjoy watching every minute of watching my babies grow up. Then as time goes by, I realize that if I don't do the "other" things, whatever they may be, I am not allowing for full fulfillment in our lives. The reality is that there will never be enough time in  a day, in a week, in a month, or in the years to cover everything we need to. Focus on the most important concepts and you will see, how things just seem to fall into place. It's never going to be perfect, but you will feel good with the outcomes. 

"The most important thing is to never stop questioning"

                                                                                                                    ~Albert Enstein

If you have tried Collaborative Conversations and Kagan Strategies, but still have a quiet class that seems to have no motivation to get engaged, try these next steps to get your class going on critical thinking skills that will leave them ready to share out with peers. 

1. Remind Students that their Home Classroom is a Safe Learning Environment-mistakes are celebrated because they are avenues to new learning! 
2. Display the Quote- "Mistakes are Proof That You Are Trying" ~Jennifer Lim, even if you don't say it on a daily basis, they will see it to be reminded of it. 
3. Wonder Wall/Parking Lot- Students can write a question they have on their mind (pertaining to their learning) to be answered at a later time.
4. Answer Board- The Teacher will write an answer in the middle of a circle thinking map and students will write questions (pertaining to that answer), on the outside of the circle map.
5. End of Day Reflection- Students can write a reflection with a question and can come up with a couple of answers (for homework) to continue the thinking process!

What if I give this a try? Don't put a stop to a question, instead encourage students to ask more questions, making it the "cool" thing to do. Yes, it make take a little more time throughout the day, but you will be a Happy Teacher when you begin to see the thinking flourish. Remember, questioning is essential for the critical thinking process to occur in your classroom. As students think more critically, they will begin to ask higher level questions that will deepen their knowledge of the content being presented. Students will be engaged and want to have the collaborative conversations to discuss new learning. Now you're teaching little learners that will be leading others to think to infinity and beyond.  

Live, Love, Teach

Hilda Sanchez 

                             

Extreme Makeover: Classroom Edition

Last month, I wrote Part 1 of a blog titled "Deconstructing Text Structures." I fully intended to post Part 2 this month and even invited all of my dedicated readers to come along as I ventured "deeper down this rabbit hole." (I've been watching reruns of "Murder She Wrote" and I fancy myself a famous OMSD blog poster with countless fans anxiously awaiting my next post.) Yes, I had lofty goals. At the time, though, I had no way of knowing that I was going to find myself in a different rabbit hole, so to speak. I found myself in the throes of a mid-life crises of sorts.  The kind of mid-life crises for teachers who are way past the mid-life crises age. It all started when I began "remodeling" my lessons to ensure I purposely taught text structure. That led me to rethink the way I make use of the limited amount of wall "real estate" available to me and my students so that my learning environment focuses on the skills and concepts (like being able to identify text structures) that truly move students forward.

I needed to allocate a considerable amount of space to my new "Text Structures" bulletin board. Every student needed to be able to see it, reference it and use it as a resource. Therefore, I needed to ensure that it could be seen from every vantage point in the room. So, I moved desks. I actually sat in students' chairs to see if I could see the board. I found myself asking: Could I read the words? Did they make sense to me? I didn't want to merely decorate my class with a new bulletin board; I wanted it to come alive.

I knew I wanted to rethink my space, but I honestly didn't know if I had the energy. When would I even have the time? Part of me (an admittedly big part) thought about waiting until August to make changes. But why? I still had a good chunk of the year to positively impact my current students. There is no better time than the present. So, for about a month straight, I worked sometimes a little at a time during lunches and recesses and sometimes a lot at a time after school.

I'm proud of the changes I've made to my physical environment because they truly do reflect the change and growth that is occurring in me professionally.

Next month. let's continue and expand on our conversation about text structures.


Starting anew,


Lola Jollie

Celebrate a Fluency Tea!

Have you ever wondered how to spice up your fluency routine?  Try a fluency "tea party."

Many years ago, I started my teaching career at a "rough" neighborhood school.  Students were somewhat unruly and I was having a difficult time trying to teach anything beyond behavior!  Well, I reached out the school site reading coach and asked for help.  She came to present what she called a fluency tea.  As she described the procedures, I internally thought "Yea right, she doesn't know my kids.  It won't work."  However, to my surprise they loved it!  It made such an impression on me that I have always sprinkled it throughout the year to engage my students in reading fluency.  Recently, I presented it for a Spotlight visiting teacher and this prompted me to share it with you!

1.  Start with a brief discussion describing the elements of a tea party.  People mingle, get to know each other, and display manners.  I enjoy to talk with the class about the aspects of British customs and why they love tea so much.  I usually show a picture on the document camera to give students some context.

2.  Manners are important!  I like to discuss that sometimes, when you are invited to a party, you have to introduce yourself to strangers.  I instruct students that they must pretend that they don't know each other.  Ask for a volunteer and teach formal ways to meet someone: shake their hand, ask for their name, and greet them in a pleasant manner.  They will giggle and think it is silly but most of they time they will buy into it.  I was also thinking that this part of the fluency tea is a great way to embed your PBIS characteristics such as kindness and respect.  These are two of our four student characteristics and I often emphasize how important it is to always be kind to each other.

3.  So what do they read?  This is a great opportunity to merge science or social studies text into your language arts block.  Two for one!!  I love to use our science leveled readers.  Since there are four Lexile levels offered on the same title, I can differentiate text complexity if I know my student's current Lexile level based on Reading Inventory results.  Since I did not have enough copies for each student, I begged my grade level partner to let me borrow her set as well for this activity and returned the books to her as soon as we were done for the day.  One of my students is beyond any lexile level that is offered by these readers so I used www.readworks.org to print him a 1200 lexile passage related to volcanoes.  The important part is to find text that each student can successfully read fluently and feel positive about their reading!

4.  Set a time limit.  I usually give the students 10 to 15 minutes to mingle and search for "strangers" to introduce themselves to and share reading.  You may also want to teach them how to give specific praises for fluency.  I have an anchor poster with the acronym APE  - Accuracy Pace Expression.  Listeners can give positive feedback on reading fluency.  During this part of the activity, it is so much fun watching your students display kindness, manners, and develop social skills that they will need as adults.

The best part about this routine is that you can take it outside if you wish.  Kids need movement all the time and sometimes an opportunity to get some fresh air!  So take it outside!  So....ready for a fluency tea party?  Don't forget to bring your manners!

Happy Writing (and reading)!
Gus Macuil

Love is in the Air

As Valentine's day quickly approaches how many of you feel a bit of anxiety?  As I think of this holiday I think of a busy classroom filled with hyper bodies! Eekk... However, what about turning this day into an opportunity to feed our classroom rapport instead of feeding our cavities? 

Building Classroom Rapport on Valentine's Day

Last year I saw a magnificent idea as I was scrolling on Instagram. A teacher had written on her white board, "What do you love most about our class?" and then allowed all of her students to answer that question. The responses were beautiful! 

So I decided to try this activity last year on Valentine's day. My students' responses made me cheese from ear to ear while filling up my heart with so much love and content. As educators we work tirelessly when we're not on. At times it's hard to notice if our students appreciate all of those off-scene hours. Our students might not be giving the effort we are asking for, not meeting the goals we set for them or may not be participating as much as we'd like them to. But this quick and easy activity made me realize that they do in fact appreciate the little things and the off-scene work. 

Some of their responses were:

"The fact that you encourage us to try our best when trying new things"

"What I love about this class is how creative it is"

"I love that you always think about us" 

"How much Miss. Vargas focuses on what we need"

"What I love is that you never yell at us"

And these are just a few of the beautiful responses I read. At the end of that year's Valentine's Day I stayed after school reading their responses, remembering how amazing these little humans are! They might not show it all of the time but they truly to appreciate what we do for them. 

This activity fills my heart with so much joy and it did the same for my students. The next day I allowed all of my students to go up and read their responses. It created a moment of  reminiscing and a class discussion on how much we love our classroom! This also gave me feedback on what to continue doing in my classroom and what was not really standing out for my students. 

So I challenge you in the midst of Valentine's Day to try this activity with your classes. Fair warning: tears and joy might be involved. 

If you try this activity I would love to hear how it went in your classroom! 

Learning & Growing, 

Nancy Vargas