Weekend Words: "There Are Many Ways of Being Smart."

I have no Weekend Words that can top this letter from a principal to her students. You can read the full article about this letter HERE.

Photo Origin

Weekend Words: Happy Belated 4th America!

The week has just gotten away from me!  It's been my first full week of summer vacation, a holiday, and I've been prepping for summer school.  I'll be back next week with some new posts.  Until then, I hope that you all celebrated a wonderful 4th of July if you are here in the states.

We had terrible rain storms on the 4th due to Hurricane Arthur.  The lightning was amazing.  You could just watch it streak through the sky as it lit up the night.   However, today has been beautiful.  We just got back from watching our local fireworks display on the lakefront.  Always fun except for the 10,000 mosquito bites! I am one itchy lady!  Tomorrow promises to be another sunny day and a day filled with postponed 4th of July celebrations.  I am going to try to not eat my weight in bbq chicken, corn on the cob, smores, and watermelon!

 

This picture is from the Ann Taylor Instagram page.  I just couldn't resist it!  I remember getting those ice pops off the ice cream truck as a kid.  A perfectly cool treat for the 4th of July! Their clothes are pretty darn nice, too! :-)  Happy Belated 4th, America!

Weekend Words

And, that's my plan on this first weekend of what will hopefully be a great summer vacation!

Weekend Words: Did I Say That?

Things I've said this week as a teacher 

that normal people say:

Tie your shoes.

Put the cap back on the marker when you are done.

Please wait your turn.

Did you finish your work?

Don't forget to wash your hands.

Things I've said this week as a teacher 

that normal people don't say:

No, licking your hands is not the same as washing your hands.

Take that pencil out of your nose right now.

Please don't be upset. I promise he was just kidding with you 

and isn't really going to Mars for his summer vacation.

We have tissues for that!!!!!

Just because the owl already digested what was in the pellet 

does NOT mean it is clean enough for you to eat.

Stop sniffing his socks!

Yogurt is a great snack, 

just not after it has been sitting in your desk for two days.

And, I actually found myself saying this one. . . 

Just 9 more days, 9 more days, 9 more days. . . 

Weekend Words: Smart is not something you are.

"Smart is not something you are, smart is something you get." So true!  This was a quote from Stephanie Harvey that I heard at her workshop in May.  I think this resonates with me as a teacher so much because I have worked many years with enrichment students and now several years with struggling students.  And, I have seen this quote reflected in their thinking and achievement in very different ways.

My struggling students tend to think "smart kids" are just that way.  They see smart as an inherent trait "smart kids" just have.  They don't see being smart as something that requires some action to achieve.

The so-called "smart kids" often take being smart for granted because they are often naturally inquisitive.  They want to know more so they don't see the work, the actions of reading, writing, listening, investigating, etc. as work.  They see it as a means to an end tin satisfying their curiosity.

I guess then, our goal is to build that inquisitive nature in our students.  To guide them in living a curious life!

Hanging Out With Stephanie Harvey

I'm going to start this post with an apology for the pictures.  I totally take all my blog pictures with my iPhone.  No fancy cameras here!  So, while my pictures are never amazing quality, they are usually a little better than these.  I think it's because they are pictures of photocopies that themselves were not super clear.  Oh well, it's the content that matters!

At the end of May, I went to an amazing workshop by Stephanie Harvey.  You probably know her best from her book Strategies That Work.  It is well worth checking out if you don't know it.  On this day, she was giving a presentation on comprehension.  

I'm not really going to dissect the entire workshop here, because I couldn't do it justice.  I will, however, share a small hodge-podge of ideas and thoughts.

•  First, much to my surprise, it was a small gathering. There were only about 30 or so people there.  We were able to interact and converse with Stephanie in a way that you just can't when you are in a large crowd.  It was great to be so up close and personal with an educator of her caliber.

• One of the things stressed was the importance of living a curious life.  The best learning happens when there is a genuine desire to know something new. Stephanie went on to stress the importance of teachers modeling this by being inquisitive ourselves and sharing this with our students.  She told a story about a teacher that was telling her kids how she knew it was Spring because birds had come back and built a nest in the eaves of her house.  She wondered why they always picked that particular eave to build every year.  She wondered if it was the same birds that were coming back every year.  This was a conversation she had with her students which led to them asking questions as well which led to investigation, research, reading, and writing to find the answers.  Because the topic came from a genuine question, there was genuine interest in finding the answers.                                                                                                                                                                                    This sounds great, but if you are like me you are thinking that we have specific curriculum to cover and birds in eaves doesn't exactly lend itself to what I need to teach.  Well, it's not about the exact content.  It is about approaching any content with a good measure of curiosity. What is it about this subject that I want to know?  As the page in her handout below noyes, ask questions and care about finding the answers.  Perhaps rather than approaching those content area topics with a "this is what I have to cover and I'm going to do it in x number of lessons with this topic on day 1, this on day 2, etc." we might be able to get our students better invested if we find out what they are curious to know about the topic.  I would imagine that what we "have" to cover will work its way in.

• Stephanie related a quote by P. David Pearson that I also liked. "The questions a student asks after reading a text are a better assessment than the questions a student can answer about that text."  So true if you really think about it.  To ask a good question about a text requires you to comprehend and synthesize that text, which absolutely requires higher level thinking skills. When a child asks an awesome question about a text, you know they got it.  You know they understood, thought about what they read ,and were able to move beyond to think outside the text.  When a child doesn't ask those great questions, but asks questions that show basic understanding or misinformation, you know there is still work to be done.  Stephanie suggested that asking something as simple as, "What questions do you have about what we read?" will provide you with a nice assessment of the reader, perhaps better than a story quiz will.  (If you want to know more related to Pearson's quote, this blogger did a synopsis of his speech from which this quote comes, and you can view the slides he used in giving the speech by clicking here and going to the link "Reading Assessment: Still Time to Change." There are also a lot of other interesting articles linked on the page you might like.)

• The amount of time children spend reading on an average day was also discussed.  There are so many studies that show the more time spent reading in a school day, the higher the reading achievement.  Stephanie did point out the significance of other factors such as socio-economic status, but one of the largest factors of success was the amount of time spent reading in the school day.  She backed up the importance of this siting many different studies that support the correlation.   One study showed that the lowest performing classrooms spent about 30 minutes a day reading while the highest achieving classrooms spent almost half the day reading. My first thought was that half a day reading seems like an unachievable goal with so many demands on our instruction time.  The most obvious solution is that our students need to be reading across the curriculum to get in that reading time.  Stephanie went on to say if we teach science and social studies in a day, taking the first ten minutes of each class to have the students read a topic related text and write down a question is twenty minutes done and added to that total reading time.  In my school, we don't teach our content classes every day so increasing our reading time in this way is still somewhat of a challenge.  However, any increase in student reading time that we can make happen is a step in the right direction!

As I wrote, there is so much more I could write about, but I will end my recap with one more thought from Stephanie Harvey.  She ended the workshop discussing some of the difficulties we face as teachers these days; curriculum demands, time constraints, the overall attitude towards teachers these days, common core, and more. As teachers, we are pulled in so many directions and given so many directives that impact our teaching.  In light of all that, her final advice to us was this:  Good instruction is good instruction, so stay the course!  In case you can't tell, it was a great workshop!

I am also going to do a little plug here for Rutgers University, specifically their Center for Literacy Development at Rutgers Graduate School of Education.  I'm lucky enough to live close enough to the university that I am able to attend their literacy workshops and experience amazing literacy leaders like Stephanie Harvey.  Below is a flyer for an upcoming development day this summer; Children's Literature in the Elementary & Middle School.   I am planning to attend because I love Seymour Simon's books and would like to hear him speak.  He is a great author of science books that just grab my students' interest every time.

But, what I am most excited about is their next literacy development series.  They are always able to get great literacy leaders to come and present.  You can sign up for the entire series or as many presentations as you like.  They aren't two day workshops, instead they offer two options.  The first day is a full day workshop, or if your time is limited, the second day is what they call an after school series which usually runs 4:30-6:30 and offers an abbreviated presentation of the full day workshop.

You can see from the flyer below that they have some phenomenal speakers coming up.  Harvey Daniels wrote, among his many publications, a great book about literature circles you might be familiar with.  One of Debbie Miller's more recent books, No More Independent Reading Without Support, is on my summer reading list.  Beers and Probst have a great book out now about close reading that is also on my to-read list.  Kylene Beer has a blog you might want to check out if you have an interest in literacy, which I have to assume you do if you are still reading this! I especially like her post on the importance of summer reading.  Finally, the last presenter in the series is Donalyn Miller author of The Book Whisperer.  I love that book!  If you need one professional book for your summer reading list, I would suggest that one. It is an easy read for the summer and will change how you think about reading.

My plan is to attend all four workshops.  I'm hoping I can get my district to pay for them or at least a couple of them.  If not, I will pay out of pocket because they are so worth it! When I find a good thing, I like to share a good thing.  That is why I am telling you all about these upcoming professional development opportunities.  If you are in the tri-state area, I encourage you to try and attend one.  They are never less than amazing!

On a different note, I wanted to let you know that I updated the post on t-shirt book talks.  Even though the post is two years old, it is still a popular one.  And, despite noting that I don't have a rubric available for the project, I still get emails asking for one.  So much so that I decided to find you a rubric.  I found a great one!  I updated the post to link to the rubric.  It is a Teachers Pay Teachers product, but it is only $1.50 and well worth it!  So, if you are still looking for a book talk rubric, click HERE to go to the post and the link.

Finally, I will see you Sunday for some new Weekend Words! My weekend words this week come straight from the Stephanie Harvey workshop and just may be my favorite so far! Check back on Sunday to see what she said.  If you've missed some past Weekend Words, you can see them here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Any thoughts on the Stephanie Harvey workshop?  

Any one interested in attending any of the Literacy Center workshops?  

We can have lunch together! :-)

Weekend Words: I Like to Party!

Probably the truest statement you will ever read about me!  I remember as a kid, during family parties I would squirrel away in my bedroom and read.  My mother used to have to come and drag me out of the room to socialize with my family!  Yeah, I was that kid!

Speaking of books (and some upcoming posts). . .

• I'm still reading Bringing Words to Life by Beck, McKewon, and Kucan as I brush on my vocabulary instruction.  It's good reading but slower reading. There's a post to come once I finish.

• At the same time, I'm also reading Teach Like a Pirate: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator by Dave Burgess.  This one is a fairly quick read, and I'm close to finishing it.  I know it is one of the more recently buzzed about books in education, but I must say I have some mixed feelings on it.  I'll also post about this one, too.

• Earlier this week I went to an AMAZING workshop by Stephanie Harvey.  You probably know her best from her book Strategies That Work. I think she is just so on target with her thinking and her books.  I will share some of the workshop with you soon.

• Finally, for those of us still teaching (I am until June 26th!) summer reading plans are in the works.  I will share later this weekend a little "summer reading - favorite book" project I organized for fifteen classroom in my school.  It turned out to be a cute end of the year mini-project.

For now, I'm off to "party!" :-)

Weekend Words: Now and Then

I told you in this post how I am on a clean and purge kick 

as my school year is coming to an end in six weeks.  

Look what I found!

This would be a picture of my plan book from 2001-2002 

and my plan book from this year, 2013-2014.

Keep in mind the plan book on the right still has six more weeks of plans to be added to it.

Hmmm. . . 

Weekend Words: Feelings Matter

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I have had this quote hanging near my desk for years.  

It is one of the first things I hang up. 

Weekend Words: I Got You a Corn Dog!

 

You must know him by now!  My friends and I love Kid President!

We love him because he knows the 20 things we should say more often, makes a great tour guide, 

and gives great pep talks! Plus, he knows that teachers see the awesome!

By the way, did you know he kissed Beyonce?

Now, go give someone a corn dog, and have a great weekend!

Weekend Words: Hard is Okay

As teachers, we try to make hard fun.  But, sometimes hard is just hard.

I have seen students struggle and when I ask what is happening, he or she will say with great frustration, "This is hard!"

My response?  "And. . . ?" Said with a quizzical look as though I'm confused as to what the problem is.

My response is usually  returned with an equally confused look and again they blurt, "But, it's hard!'

Sometimes this is also followed with, "I can't do it. It's too hard."

My response?  "It might be hard, but that doesn't mean you can't do it.  It just means you have to work a little harder at it and not give up. And, I'm going to help you.  Let's look at it together."

Giving up because it is hard is never an option!

Instead, acknowledging that it very well may be hard, but you can do this, and I'm here to help you do it wins every time.

Hard is okay.

Being willing to tackle hard builds stamina, perseverance, and thinking skills.
Being successful at hard brings pride, knowledge, and a belief that you can do those hard things!

It makes that next hard thing a little less hard.

Weekend Words: Procrastination is My Enemy

So, Spring Break.  This past week has been mine.  I left school on Friday with incomplete lesson plans and lots of papers to grade.  No Problem!  I have a whole week to get this done!  Easter next Sunday and no school until Monday?  Plenty of time to do it all!  I can do a little work every day, or maybe do it all this weekend so I can just enjoy the coming week off!  So much time to get it all done! I happily stuffed my teacher bag to overflowing with work and headed out the door full of optimism and plans!

Today.  I have today to get it all done.

Weekend Words: Recognizing Strengths

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Working with children reading 1-2+ years below grade level, I find this to be a mindful quote.  In a time where data drives all, we are constantly looking at data on our students.  

Too often I think we just note what they know, but focus on what they don't.  What do I need to teach?  What do I need to reteach?  Why aren't they getting this skill? 

Sometimes we need to step back and celebrate what they can do.  I find my students are often very well aware of what they can't do.  They know reading is hard for them.  They know writing is difficult.  They know they have difficulty decoding.  They know they can't understand what they read sometimes.  They know they can't always answer the questions teachers ask.  

What they don't often know is that there is a lot they can do really well.  There are things they can do better than other students.  Maybe they can't decode and have poor fluency, but maybe when you read with them and discuss the book they are awesome at inferencing. Maybe they can't spell, but maybe they are really pretty good at writing good sentences.  Maybe they struggle with higher order thinking questions, but have no difficulty with literal questions.

Yes, we want them to be better in those areas of need and of course we will continue to work on them.  But, we also need to take time to celebrate what our friends can do.  

Two of the ways I try to recognize my students' strengths include refrigerator papers and high-five postcards.  I had these postcards specially made via Vistaprint.  I thought I had posted about them, but in looking back for the post I realized I hadn't.  I'm on spring break now, but will write about them when I get back to school and can take a couple of pictures.  Essentially, they are postcards to send home when a student has done something to deserve a high-five from everyone at home.  

There are lots of ways to recognize student achievement, but this post is more about recognizing what what our friends do well but may take for granted or simply not realize.  While it is important for all children to realize what they are capable of, I feel it is even more important for my friends who struggle. 

To bring my friends' strengths to their attention, I want to take a day out and simply let them know exactly what it is they are rocking.  Just one day not focused on what they need to learn or do better.  One day to say, "Hey! Do you know you are awesome at ___________ in reading class?!"

I'm thinking of having a circus "Strong Man" celebration. I see a different group of children each period of the day, so it would have to be something small but powerful that I can do in 40 minutes. 

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I'm still sketching it all out, but it involves creating a strong man themed printable that I can list all the literacy strengths that child has.  Something colorful that I can print on card stock and give to them to take home. It will be a way to build confidence and help my friends realize they are more capable than they know.  I thought this would be a great end of the year celebration, but if I can get myself moving on this, it would be awesome to do the week before our state testing begins in May. I won't go in to all the details now, but will post about it when it happens.  I have some fun ideas!

The point of today's Weekend Words is simply to say, don't forget to recognize all your friends CAN do when focusing on what they still need to learn to do.

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Weekend Words is a new post I would like to do each weekend. 

It would be a quote or saying that I find interesting, powerful, or just funny. It may or may not be followed by my thoughts.