Academic Dialogue: Cute Kinders give Peer Feedback

Thus far this month, we have primarily examined small group academic discussions.  Today, we will visit kindergarteners who are holding peer feedback discussions that would knock the socks off of many adults!

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/growth-mindset-young-students

Academic dialogue tends to be synonymous with small groups.  True, intentional, and thoughtful small group conversations are fertile ground for growing a plethora of academic and social skills.  However, this video exemplifies how a well-structured whole-group peer feedback session:

Provides specific, meaningful peer feedback on a writing assignment

Affords students an opportunity to set their own revision goals based on success criteria

Builds respectful dialogue and active listening skills

Encourages a growth mindset for both students and teachers

Upper grades will especially appreciate the incredible gift this kindergarten teacher is giving her young students by empowering them with these experiences.  Plus, they are super cute!

Academic Dialogue: Taking it to the next level

“The world increasingly relies on people to work together to collaboratively solve problems.” - Dan St. Louis, Principal of University Park Campus School.

Dan St. Louis’s statement imparts yet another nuanced case for ensuring structured and scaffolded student-to-student academic dialogue.  Lucky for us, University Park Campus School is spotlighted in today’s video!

Last week, we examined directly teaching “talk moves” in order to provide students with an academic discussion framework.   Today’s installment, “Teaching Group Work:  Building Student Collaboration and Agency,” provides a more complex method for not only stimulating academic dialogue, but also for creating truly interdependent, problem-solving group work.

http://www.edutopia.org/practice/teaching-group-work-building-student-collaboration-and-agency

This Edutopia video includes a detailed explanation of the school’s seven-step process for “building student collaboration and agency.”

The seven-steps employed by the school are:  

Help Students Experience Group Work Through Warm-up Activities

Share How People Learn in Different Ways

Build Comfort Around Speaking in a Group

Give Students Roles

Create a Strong Group-Work ProgramGroup Students by Their Complementary Strengths

Assess Group Work

As you view the video, you might think about:

Why are Steps 1-3 important to laying the foundation for successful collaborative learning?

How can teachers use Steps 4-7 to strategically meet individual learners’ needs? (Hint: Take a close look at Step 6).

Bonus alert:  Hyperlinks to nifty resources appear throughout and at the end of article.   You definitely won’t want to skip either the video or the article!

Academic Dialogue: Talk Moves in Academic Discussions

It’s October, and the first quarter is about to wrap-up.  You have worked hard to establish collaborative learning structures.  Students are well-versed in procedures such as, “Talk to your shoulder partner.  Jelly goes first.” They are champs in signaling completion of their discussion.  Yet, you feel their conversations are simply repeating what you have already told them.  You are wondering how to move beyond surface-level discussions.

Today’s video is “Talk Moves in Academic Discussions,” which features scaffolds in the form of sentence frames that directly teach students how to engage in an academic conversation.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-ells-to-participate-in-discussions-ousd

The video showcases English Language Development students applying the talk moves to their discussion.  Without a doubt, these scaffolds are critical for ELD students in their English language acquisition.  However, providing a framework for discussion benefits all students in developing their expressive language proficiency.

Of course, in the beginning these talk moves may be a bit stilted, but as they are afforded myriad opportunities to apply them, students develop into champion academic conversationalists!

Academic Dialogue: Beyond the Basics

The idea of structured, academic dialogue has received great attention in recent years.

This attention is well-deserved; Stanford University professor Dr. Jeff Zweirs provides clear justification for increasing academic dialogue as “the process of learning is actually a social venture, and interactions such as conversations (and specifically academic conversations) [help] students to enhance and broaden their comprehension of a specific topic profoundly and in a meaningful way” (Zweirs, 2014).  Yet, Dr. Zweirs’ research found most classroom academic conversations are dominated by teachers, robbing students of the rich opportunity to actively engage in a learning dialogue with their peers.  Armed with this knowledge, teachers have made a concerted effort to increase structured student-to-student conversations. As a result, students are now talking to each other much more often than in the past.

“Peanut butter and jelly partners” are probably familiar to most teachers, especially those teaching elementary-aged students.  It is an accessible strategy for creating “think-pair-share” partner groups to ensure equal participation and individual accountability.  The danger, however, is sometimes these sharing opportunities are merely a recitation of facts or lower-level comprehension.

Without a doubt, structures are a necessary foundation for academic conversations that foster deep and extended learning.  We are going to take this base even further this month as we share various resources to deepen teachers’ academic conversation toolkit.

To get us started, here are Dr. Zweirs’ “Think-Pair-Share Tips.”

In Think-Pair-Shares, students should:

Think about the possible responses and how best to say them in connected sentences (They can write them down, too, but shouldn’t read them when talking)

Interact face to face (face each other)

Take turns talking

Listen to remember, connect, and compare to what the partner says.

Give evidence from the book, discussions, or own life.

Ask clarifying questions to know more   (Do you mean that…? Why do you think that? Where does it say that? Did you get that from a random website? Tell me more about…)

Zweirs, J. (2014). Academic language literacy: tools & resources. Retrieved from

http://www.jeffzwiers.com/ and    http://jeffzwiers.org/tools–resources.html

Assessment Strategies: One Final Word

Throughout this month, we have explored strategies for incorporating authentic and formative assessments into daily practice.  Our videos have featured math, language arts, and collaborative assessment practices from a span of grade levels.

Today’s video movingly depicts the aim of all teachers:  graduating seniors who are ready to take on the world, as evidenced by a culminating “defense of deeper learning.”

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/college-success-portfolio-defense-structure-eed

Whether one teaches kindergarten or high school, all educators will appreciate how the teachers and students featured in this video demonstrate the power of many formative assessments culminating into this final articulation of deeply personal, while also academic, learning.

You might want to have a tissue nearby, especially towards the end.

Assessment Strategies: Low Tech + High Tech

Today’s installment of awesome assessment strategies contains two short Teaching Channel videos.  One is high-tech and the other is low-tech, and both have great applications for the busy classroom teacher!

Our “low-tech” example is the use of “infinitely usable folders” for practice and formative assessment.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/streamline-teaching-practices

Our “high-tech” example is especially useful for classrooms equipped with Chromebooks or other one-to-one technology.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/student-assessment-with-tech

Some points to consider as you view these short videos are:

How does the teacher’s use of this strategy allow for differentiated practice?

What important information can a teacher gather in real-time about students’ progress ?

How might this strategy be applied to other content areas?

How do students benefit from a mixture of low- and high-tech assessment strategies?

Josh Kwon, the teacher featured in the “Using Tech Tools for Formative Assessment” video, has a link to connect with him via Twitter.  The link is found underneath the reflection questions to the right of the video player.

Assessment Strategies: In Real-Time

Let’s talk about numbers!  Our previous assessment TXT4 Teachers featured Language Arts based authentic formative assessment strategies.  Today, we will look at teacher who has incorporated a variety of real-time formative assessment techniques based on Making Number Talks Matter by Cathy Humphreys and Ruth Parker (2015).

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/number-talks-for-assessments

The teacher, Crystal Morey, demonstrates a number of best practices in the video.  Some highlights to consider:

Her use of a real-time formative assessment helps her quickly identify students to target for the small group number talk.

When she uncovers an unexpected misconception, she adjusts her approach by “wiping the slate clean.”

She adjusts her questions based on student responses, keeping the small group session inquiry based in order for students to recognize and learn from their misconceptions.

She quickly reflects on the “surprises” from the first class in order to adjust her approach with subsequent class periods.

Although the lesson is math-focused, teachers of all grade levels and content areas can appreciate Ms. Morey’s use of real-time formative assessments to quickly differentiate and adjust instruction.  

Assessment Strategies: Smarter not Harder

Today’s video is 15 minutes, but it is packed with loads of working “smarter not harder” collaborative learning and formative assessment strategies.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/formative-assessment-example-ela-sbac

The lesson exemplifies Smarter Balance’s four “Formative Assessment Attributes:

Clarify – Students collaboratively clarify success criteria for effective academic discussions.

Elicit – The teacher elicits evidence of learning of the collaborative success criteria as students discuss connections to events in a novel.

Interpret – The teacher interprets student performance evidence as they engage in the collaborative discussion about the novel.

Act On- The teacher provides immediate feedback to students’ use of performance criteria; students adjust their group discussion based on the teacher’s feedback; students reflect on their performance.

As you view the video, you might consider:

How does the lesson exemplify authentic as well as formative assessment of collaborative discussions?

How might you adapt the assessment strategies used in this video with younger or older grade students?

How might you adapt the assessment strategies for other content areas?

What are other benefits to both teachers and students of the four “Formative Assessment Attribute” as highlighted in this video?

Break out the popcorn, and sit back to enjoy this rich example of authentic-formative assessment!

Assessment Strategies: Combining Authentic with Formative for the Win

In an educational setting, “authentic assessment” is understood as tasks that look and sound “real-world” and that “value the thinking behind the work process, as much as the finished product” (Pearson & Valencia, 1987; Wiggins, 1989; Wolf, 1989).

Authentic assessment is typically viewed as synonymous with “performance based assessment” or its newest incarnation, “Project Based Learning,” which tend to connote larger and more complicated projects – summative assessments. Yet, what about the day-to-day formative assessments that are foundational to scaffolding learning?

Over the next few weeks, we will hone in on melding “authentic” with “formative” assessments. Today’s resource comes from The Teaching Channel.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/quick-student-assessment

As you view this short video, you might consider:

How is this strategy an authentic and formative assessment?

How might it be adapted for younger students?

Stay tuned for more spiffy strategies!

De-escalating Challenging Behavior: Teacher's Personal Approach

Welcome to our final installment of the de-escalating challenging behavior series!

Haim Ginott’s words continue to resonate nearly 50 years later.  Although we have laid the foundation for understanding students with anxiety or defiance disorders, this insight is all for naught unless we are mindful of our responses to challenging behaviors.

The adage “catch ‘em being good” applies to students with anxiety or defiance disorders.  However, students who have difficulty controlling behavior may have precious few opportunities to be “caught being good.”

Instead, a teacher might consider saying random kind words or ask the student to take-on a responsibility well-suited to his abilities.  According to Katrina Schultz, “This kind of non-contingent reinforcement helps the child to see the teacher likes him for who is, not because he does math well or reads perfectly” (Schultz, 2016).

Moreover, not responding yes or no to a student’s request or using non-confrontational body language can allow students the time needed to use self-monitoring strategies and diffuse a potentially explosive response.  For instance, rather than making eye contact and waiting for compliance in response to disruptive behavior, a teacher can instead quietly and respectfully ask a student to stop the behavior and then move away in order to give the student time to do a “body check” and activate a calming strategy.  Or, rather than answering a yes/no question, a teacher can rephrase the student’s query, e.g., “Can I go to the bathroom now?” to “When may I go the restroom?”  Doing so removes the yes/no dichotomy and bypasses a potentially explosive response. And, of course, praising a student for employing de-escalation strategies is imperative to reinforcement of these powerful life-skills.

Without a doubt, anxious or defiant behavior is stressful for both students and teachers.  Yet, a teacher’s “personal approach” indeed creates the “climate of the classroom.”  Remember, “We are 50% of every interaction with a child.”

This four-part series of TXT4 Teachers is based on Katrina Schwartz’s article, “20 Tips to Help De-escalate Interactions with Anxious or Defiant Students” (2016).  The original article is located at https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/04/21/20-tips-to-help-de-escalate-interactions-with-anxious-or-defiant-students/.

De-escalating Challenging Behavior: Work Avoidance Strategy

Today is Day 3 of 4 of our de-escalating challenging behavior series!

We have examined how students with anxiety or defiance disorders experience typical behavior management techniques differently and how to pro-actively create an environment that decreases the likelihood of disruptive actions. Today’s focus is strategies to overcome a common side effect of anxiety:  Work Avoidance.

Unsurprisingly, when a child fails to initiate and follow-through with tasks, adults tend to attribute such avoidance to laziness or inability.  In truth, a child’s anxiety, caused by a diagnosed anxiety disorder or simply from past failures, “freezes” working memory, making it impossible for the child to move forward.  Luckily, myriad strategies exist to either mitigate or prevent anxiety-provoked work avoidance altogether.

1.     A teacher might allow a student to preview assignments before they are assigned in class.  Doing so bypasses the “flight or fight” reaction anxious students experience when they first see an assignment.  Similarly, students can be allowed to use individual whiteboards as a rough draft before committing their work to paper, thereby minimizing anxiety about “messing up.”

2.     Directly teaching and labeling strategies when used by the child is another excellent preventative tool.  If a student has difficulty getting started, rather than swooping in to help, the teacher can label what is occurring and ask the student what strategy she might use: “Looks like you’re having trouble persisting.  What strategy are you going to use?”

3.     Speaking of persistence, a teacher can encourage students to use strategies such as chunking an assignment to complete easier problems first, checking their own work, or collaborating with peers.

4.     Ask a student his perception of a task before beginning and after completion, and keep a running record of his responses over the course of a few weeks.  Then share this data with the student.  More often than not, the perceived difficulty is greater than reality.

Anxiety-induced disruptive behavior is another form of work avoidance.  As a result, students can be taught self-monitoring skills by recognizing their own signs of agitation and skills for calming themselves.

1.     Making students aware of their own physiological signs of anxiety is a good starting point.  The teacher can prompt students to describe where they are feeling anxiety in their bodies and keep a record of such responses to then share with students.  This data is used to teach student to do a “body check” and implement a strategy to calm herself if she feels anxiety building.

2.     Collaborate with the student to find a calming strategy, preferably one that does not require cognition, such as singing softly to himself or repeating a phrase.  Rehearsing calming strategies while the student is not agitated builds the “go-to automatic reply” needed in stressful situations.

More importantly, teachers should remember that what adults perceive as negative behavior is often a manifestation of uncomfortable emotional and physiological responses.  Our final instalment will reiterate the importance of the teacher’s response to anxious and defiant behavior.

De-escalating Challenging Behavior: Triggers: Antecedents to Negative Behaviors.

Welcome to Day 2 of our de-escalating challenging behavior series!

You will recall last week we examined “All Behavior Has a Function,” where we explored tips for providing pro-active positive attention to students, especially those who may have anxiety or defiance disorders.

Sudden change, social dynamics, transitions between  activities, independent writing activities, or just about any unstructured time or unexpected demand can create a space for negative behavior, especially  for anxious students. Clear communication with students coupled with thoughtful strategies can alleviate anxiety and the likelihood of acting out during these trigger times.

Provide a specified activity during “wait time” (e.g., early finishing of an assignment, transition to specials) to occupy a student’s attention. Such activities should cognitively engage the child without necessarily being academic. For instance, a child who finishes assignments early might be directed to turn over his paper and draw a picture or complete a puzzle.

Similar to discovering a student’s preference for receiving praise, a teacher can confer with the student to discover a suitable “wait-time” activity.

Likewise, providing a “find a good stopping place” cue instead of a time limit warning also reduces anxiety for students prone to perfectionism.

Provide “in-between” activities when transitioning from a pleasurable activity such as socializing to an academic one. For example, perhaps give students a few minutes of coloring time before launching into the next academic activity. Remember, “Kids of all ages” love to color! 

Other transition activities might also include playing content related but motivational videos or music as students enter the classroom.

This list is only a beginning! Consider setting aside a few minutes during Professional Learning Community meetings to devise other strategies to mitigate any antecedents to bad behavior.

De-escalating Challenging Behavior: All Behavior has a Function

What happens when a conflict arises in your classroom?

Our next four Texts 4 Teachers posts will focus on strategies for de-escalating conflict with anxious or defiant students.

Today’s topic:  All Behavior Has a Function

A long-standing psychological principle is that if a teacher ignores negative behavior, then the behavior will be eventually “extinguished.” Not true for students with an anxiety disorder, a recognized learning disability.  Anxiety disorders are often perplexing because, unlike ADHD-related behaviors, which tend to be consistently present, anxiety is situational.  The good news is, according to Jessica Minahan, co-author of The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students, “we are 50% of every interaction with a child, so we have a lot of control over that interaction” (Schwartz, 2016).

When a student is anxious, their working memory shuts down.  Yet, once the student is calm, she performs on par with her peers.  Moreover, typical consequences such as ignoring negative behavior or offering a reward for positive performance can actually amplify anxiety.

Additionally, whether a student has a diagnosed behavior disorder or not, many children figure out early on that negative behavior is a quick, easy way to gain an adult’s attention.  Some effective ways to de-escalate anxious, attention-seeking negative behavior are:

1.      Engage anxious or negative-attention seeking students at the beginning of the period with a positive presupposition such as, “I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our topic today.  I’ll check-in with you in about five minutes.”  It’s important for the teacher to follow-through with this initial check-in and consistently circle back to the student throughout the period.  Thus, the student receives positive attention from the beginning of class, and the anxious student receives regular feedback about her progress, thereby heading off any potential outbursts.

2.     Give fact-based praise privately, especially to anxious students.  Consider conferring with students at the beginning of the year to ascertain their preference for positive feedback.

Tune back-in next Tuesday for “Antecedents to Negative Behaviors.”

Schwartz, K. (2016, April 21). 20 tips to help de-escalate interactions with anxious or defiant Students. 

Increasing Student Engagement

How do we know our students are truly engaged? What are easy-to-implement engagement strategies?  How does student engagement work hand-in-hand with a positive classroom culture?  Intrigued?  Read Stacy Hurst’s short article for answers to these questions and more!

http://www.readinghorizons.com/blog/seven-ways-to-increase-student-engagement-in-the-classroom

Building a Positive Learning Community

Looking to extend the “honeymoon” for the rest of the school year? 

 “Normalizing error” and writing a classroom pledge are just a few strategies for building a positive learning community.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/establish-classroom-culture

Logic Games for Downtime

Your stellar lesson just finishes and there’s still four minutes until the bell… what do you do? A. Tell everyone put their head on their desk and stay perfectly still; B. Run to lunch early and cut everyone else in line; C. Play a super fun game that sharpens reasoning and logic skills. If you chose A or B, stop reading now. This isn’t for you. If you chose C, here are several good ones for you to use:

http://www.k-5mathteachingresources.com/mental-math.html

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/classroom-activities-quick-fillers-grades-6%C2%968

Bringing Your Technology Game to the Next Level

Do you have technology tools available to you but you are not quite sure what to do with them? Or maybe you are looking to go further with technology than you did last year. 

The Arizona Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) is a great resource to support you. It is a differentiated collection of lesson plans and videos that supports teachers with moving to “the next level” of implementation. No matter where you are right now. Enjoy this fantastic resource brought to you by our friends at the Arizona K12 Center: http://www.azk12.org/tim/

Developing Relationships with Challenging Students

It’s pretty easy to pick out your most challenging student(s) within the first few days of school. Instead of panicking and hoping his/her parents get transferred to Guam, try these strategies for developing a relationship:

            1. Make a personal connection. In most cases, when a student feels you really care about him/her, behavior issues can be significantly reduced. Ask her/him about hobbies, interests, weekends, families and anything else you can think of.

            2. Give the power back. If a student exhibits negative behavior when asked to complete a specific kind of task, chances are she/he is attempting to distract from a deficit or avoid an uncomfortable situation that you can’t see. Determine if there are actions you can take to make the student feel more powerful or less vulnerable. Remember, these are kids trying to figure out how to navigate life. Success now leads to success later in life.

            3. Inclusion not isolation. Feeling included is a basic human need. Isolating students for being disruptive adds to the feeling of exclusion and rejection. Build a strong student to student environment where students want to be with each other and encourage one another. Classroom Circles are a great strategy to build inclusion. You can read about them here:http://www.healthiersf.org/RestorativePractices/Resources/documents/RP%20Curriculum%20and%20Scripts%20and%20PowePoints/Classroom%20Curriculum/Teaching%20Restorative%20Practices%20in%20the%20Classroom%207%20lesson%20Curriculum.pdf

Building Strong Relationship with Students

Building relationships with students is the foundation to student success. Here are three strategies for building strong relationships:

1. Meet with small groups or individuals and ask them what they want in their classroom. Work to incorporate elements of their ideas into everyday activities you probably already have planned. Point out how you have used specific students’ ideas to improve the classroom (i.e. “Ezra had the idea to play more games in class. Today we are going to play a math game called Guess My Number. Thank you Ezra for that great idea!”).

2. Ensure you make a personal connection to every student in your class in the first month of school. Keep a record of each student and at least one personal connection you can make (i.e. You notice Maria likes the singer Demi Lovato. Ask Maria what her favorite Demi Lovato song is. Listen to the song and then share with Maria what you liked about it, even if you have to work really hard to find something!).

3. Use ice breaker activities to facilitate students getting to know one another and you. Here are some examples:

For younger students: www.activityvillage.co.uk/ice-breaker-games

For middle school students: www.cultofpedagogy.com/classroom-icebreakers/

For high school students: icebreakerideas.com/icebreakers-high-school-students/

Summer Workshops

Have we mentioned how awesome you are? Because You Are Awesome! 

TXTs 4 Teachers will take a short break for the summer and we’ll be back in August.

In the meantime, make your summer “PD-licious” with workshops to energize your classroom this fall! Register for classes here: goo.gl/akyysn