It was exciting this weekend to spend it at the Region 3 CTA conference. More so since it's my region for CTA and I saw many familiar faces. The was a few people from my local, the Montebello Teachers Association. On Saturday, I presented with Norma Sanchez, in her workshop, Common Core and Literacy Strategies. Although, I have done this workshop with her a few times, it always seems new to me. Since, the teachers that attend and participate always have different questions and approach to the strategies we present. I always learn something new that I can bring back to the district's Cafe workshops or to my school site. The second workshop I did was especially important to me. It was the presentation of my Teacher Leadership Project with my Region 3 Cohort. The workshops title was "Teacher Leadership: Taking the Lead in Implementing the Common Core and New Initiatives." I am so honored to have presented with these ladies. They truly are the definition of what teacher leadership should look like. Their projects are as diverse as our personalities. However, they are meaningful and they are what really drives instruction in the classroom and what makes teaching at any level an art.
From left to right, Monica Cooper, Barbara Ransom, Adriana Perez, Tina Gruen,
Gabriela Orozco Gonzalez, Ashley Cooper.
The blog is focused
on best practices while they transition into teaching the Common Core Algebra 1
standards.
On Sunday, the third workshop I presented, "Common Core and the New English Language Development
Standards" was fantastic. The participants were engaged and had great questions.
I covered the demands of the NEW English Language Development Standards.
Key Shifts:
and the PLDs
and of course… provided TONS of ideas and strategies! I added them to the TAB above labeled CCSS Resources, scroll down until you see the ELD links I provided. There must be over 25 resources I collected.
I was recently selected by the
National Education Association (NEA) to participate in the Teacher Ambassadors Project. This initiative is a partnership among the Smarter Balanced Assessment
Consortium (Smarter Balanced), the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers
(AFT), and WestEd, and is generously funded by the Leona M. and Harry B.
Helmsley Charitable Trust. Teacher Ambassadors from across the nation will
learn how the Smarter Balanced Assessment System, including the formative
assessment process, can be used to implement the Common Core State Standards.
This project is the first formal partnership among Smarter Balanced, the NEA,
and the AFT.
I am personally very excited to
be part of this project, since it ties in all the work I have been doing with my
colleagues at my school district and across the state (with the CTA Teacher
Leadership Cohort). Almost two years ago, I was selected to be part of the
Smarter Balanced Consortium. As an assessment writer, I received all my
training through webinars and literature that was provided by Smarter Balanced.
This training was unique in the sense that I was able to meet with them
face-to-face. It was insightful to be with a room of teachers across the nation
and listen to their questions, concerns, and perception of what is occurring in
their state, thus far in implementation of the Common Core Standards. This
component of the training was invaluable. It expanded my knowledge (especially
the Q & A with Joe Willhoft, the executive director for the Smarter
Balanced Assessment Consortium) of the Assessment System Components.
Me, Joe Willhoft (Executive Director for Smarter Balanced), and Julie Webb (fellow CTA Leadership Cohort Participant)
Julie Webb and I met this summer at the CTA Leadership Cohort Training. She is also knowledgeable in CCSS and has a great blog with tons of resources. Please check it out: blog.litcentric.com
Here are just some of the topics
we covered (I attached some links to the topics):
Overview of the Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium and Summative Assessment Development
Mathematics Instructional Shifts
in Smarter Balanced Item Design and Development
It was two days filled with information and tons of resources that I am excited to share with the teachers that participate in the Common Core Cafe. I posted below some of our posters that we worked on during the trainings.
With the
implementation of the Common Core State Standards, we are in the midst of
identifying best practices not just for teachers and their development, but
also for helping students in areas such as understanding complex texts. There
is so much concern about the challenges that these standards present, that we
often forget how significant and exciting it is that educators across the
country can now work collaboratively to meet this challenge. Today, I was
fortunate to deliver the second session for the Common Core Café. The teachers
that came to this session are not only curious, professional, driven, but also
open to sharing their “tool kit” of strategies they currently have with the
Café participants across the district. Listening to their engaged discussions
gave validity to the work that we are trying to accomplish. That as teachers,
we have a repertoire of strategies that will help our students master the
Common Core standards.
Reading Aloud to children,
even after they know how to read, is such a valuable experience! Children of
all ages love to gather around and hear a good story, told by a skillful
reader.
The anchor standards that we focused today on are:
Here are a few reasons why
reading to your class is such a relevant strategy to increase learning in your
class:
Reading aloud exposes
children to complex language, which will help the children in all areas of
their development, especially their reading development.
Reading aloud to children
enhances a child's oral vocabulary. A strong oral vocabulary is essential to
reading comprehension.
Reading aloud teaches
children about the world. It promotes lots of conversations about what is like
in different parts of the world, for people who are different from themselves. They
travel to faraway lands and they travel through time.
Reading aloud models
reading fluency and good reading habits.
Reading aloud models good
reading strategies. Most teachers "think aloud" while reading,
modeling the types of thoughts readers have. ("I wonder what happens
next." or "I think he's going to..." are great conversation
starters with children!)
Reading aloud helps
children learn how stories are structured. They learn how stories typically
begin by introducing the characters and setting, then things develop, a
conflict arises, then a solution.
Reading aloud helps
children recognize and explore feelings through the characters in the stories
read to them. They develop empathy and compassion.
Read alouds encourage
thinking.
Read alouds encourage
imagination!
Read alouds encourage
children to express themselves more clearly and more confidently.
The CCSS Exemplar Texts
Should you only stick to these or explore others...? Yes! Explore! Tailor your own curriculum to meet the needs of students.
One issue of
concern to educators is the grade-level lists of text exemplars that are included
in Appendix B
of the CCSS. Many schools and some states interpret these lists of stories,
poems, and informational texts as core lists that all students should read and
are attempting to purchase these sets and mandate them for classroom use. A
close reading of the standards document indicates that the list and text
excerpts are provided to help teachers explore the levels of complexity and
quality of texts recommended for a particular grade level, so they can make
their own informed selections. The
lists are thus exemplars of text complexity, not a mandated reading list.
For lists of the CCSS Exemplar Texts
for your grade click HERE.
After looking at all these
books on Bookworm.com, I'm aching to buy them all and read them to my kids!
They represent a variety of cultures, people, places, and topics that
will inspire any child!
Here are some of my favorite books to read aloud to my class. They also lend themselves to crafting Common Core Standards based lessons that enhance student learning and deepen student understanding.
This
is a rather interesting book about eccentric and preposterous suppositions
stated in simple text but accompanied by surrealistic images, as the cover
indicates with fish for leaves.
If... has very little text, but the content and illustrations are
extremely powerful. The text and illustrations demand a response, both
immediate and in imaginative "what if " type discussion. Interaction
with the text is immediate...
If cats could fly..., If mice were hair..., If worms had
wheels..., If toes were teeth..., If ugly were beautiful..., If music could be
held, ... The book ends with If this is the end ... then dream up some more!
The front cover of the book shows a branch covered with
green fish ("If leaves were fish"). Before the initiation the reading
of the book, the children predicted what the book could possibly be about.
Could this relate to the world we know? Why / why not? Could there be a time or
situation where this could happen? How? What questions did they want to ask
about the possibilities of "If.."? Why such a strange title? How
could this fit with what we predict about the book?
This inquiry approach to the introduction to this book
set the mood for imaginative thinking, a sense of fun in contributing ideas and
listening to what children could suggest. As a class, we establish some ground
rules for further sharing of opinion. I will refer the students to revisit our rules for academic class discussion. I also teach artistic inquiry in my classroom and to also teach students how to draw conclusions.
Here is a great article on how to teach artistic inquiry:
Fortunately Ned was invited to a surprise party. Unfortunately the party was a thousand miles away. Fortunately he borrowed an airplane. Unfortunately the motor exploded. Good fortune follows bad through a hilarious series of cliff-hanging escapades that lead to a fortunate ending.
My students and I love
this book. Not only were my students able to make predictions, but they were also
able to create funny predictions that were more elaborate than the story
provided. They loved making their own cause/effect book. It was a great way to
teach the concept, read fun literature that connected to their lives, and try a
different type of writing. They loved sharing the books they created.
Additional literacy ideas
to use with this book:
Story
Pattern- this is a FUN story to
imitate as a writer. Have your child write their own Fortunately story. They
could narrate it to you, or they could make it in the form of a book complete
with illustrations if that interests them. Alternatively, a student could
predict what happens next and continue writing the story.
1st Grade Student practicing writing in a pattern (Cause and Effect)
Vocabulary- the words "Fortunately" and
"Unfortunately" are repeated throughout the story. Does your child
know what they mean? Complete shutterflap book.
Prefix- Un- for
older students who are reading well, this would be a good time to introduce the
concept of the prefix UN. Make a list of all the words you can think of that
start with un-. Your older student may also enjoy finding other prefixes that
are frequently used in the English language and making lists for each prefix.
Students come up with words that have the prefix "un"
We use our spiral notebooks to go over the prefix "un"
The
Day the Crayons Quit, Drew Daywalt’s clever story of a box of crayons gone
rogue will get the whole family laughing at the letters written by the
occupants of the ubiquitous yellow and green box. The combination of text and
Oliver Jeffers' illustrations match the colors' personalities beautifully as
the crayons share their concern, appreciation, or downright frustration: yellow
and orange demand to know the true color of the sun, while green--clearly the
people pleaser of the bunch--is happy with his workload of crocodiles, trees,
and dinosaurs. Peach crayon wants to know why his wrapper was torn off, leaving
him naked and in hiding; blue is exhausted and, well, worn out; and pink wants
a little more paper time. The result of this letter writing campaign is
colorful creativity and after reading this book I will never look at crayons
the same way again--nor would I want to. -Seira Wilson, Amazon.com
This
picture book is not only clever and charming, but it is a great mentor text.
Here are a few of the possible things you can use it for with the writers
in your workshop:
Building Content
Through Show, Not Tell (Using Illustrations):
This idea comes from Dorfman and Cappelli’s book Mentor Texts: Teaching WritingThrough Children’s Literature, K-6(pages 94-95). Each
crayon’s mood or situation is reflected in each illustration that accompanies
its letter. Students who are drawing and writing can study the illustrations in
this text to help them better show what’s happening in their pieces through
pictures and text.
Commas in Lists: If your students need guidance, there are many examples of
commas that appear in lists in this book.
Ending Punctuation: The ending punctuation is varied in this text. Many
sentences trail off (…), ask questions (?) or end in a declaration (!).
Friendly Letter
Format: Page after page, each crayon’s letter
to Duncan begins with a salutation (e.g., Dear Duncan; Hi Duncan) and ends with
a closing (e.g., Your overworked friend, Red Crayon; Your naked friend, Peach
Crayon) that reflects each crayon’s voice.
Lead: The book begins with “One day in class, Duncan went to
take out his crayons and found a stack of letters with his name on them.”
I don’t know about you, but I was wondering what was in those letters
immediately! While the book began like so many other books, with the
words, “one day,” it immediately sucked me because of everything else in this
powerful first sentence.
Precise Words: Each crayon uses precise words (i.e., nouns, verbs, and
adjectives) to describe his/her situation. You can examine these author’s
word choices alongside students and talk about the way precise language helps
create a greater impact (than less specific words would have if they were
used).
Variations in Print: Some words are capitalized, some phrases are underlined,
and some sentences are written slightly larger. You can ask students to
consider why the author (and illustrator) did this so they can try it out in
their own writing.
Voice: Each crayon has his/her own distinct voice. You might
choose to examine the way each crayon writes with voice with each student.
In addition, you can have a conversation about the tone students use in
letters by examining the way some crayons are more respectful towards
Duncan (with their persuasive arguments), while others are downright whiny
Oliver Jeffers: Picture Book Maker
This video clip is poignant to the classroom teacher that appreciates the value illustrations bring to text. Every year I have one, maybe two (if we are lucky) artists that love to draw in the class. I say "we" because students in class always enjoy learning and appreciating the artwork of our classmates. Sometimes these students that are artist, only love to draw. They come to school with the hope that they will get to use their very talented skills during the day. I love to incorporate illustrations, artwork of all mediums, as a component of finalizing a project. I love to read books to the class that are rich not only in words but in illustrations. Hence, this video clip is about Oliver Jeffers, an illustrator.
Oliver Jeffers takes us through the process of writing and illustrating
his picture books in this fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the
artist. Oliver Jeffers has written the picture books This Moose Belongs
to Me, Stuck, The Incredible Book-Eating Boy, Lost and Found, How to
Catch a Star, The Great Paper Caper, Up and Down, The Heart and the
Bottle, The Hueys and illustrated the upcoming The Day the Crayons Quit.
Use this video to show students that illustrators play a huge role in bringing words to life.
ReadWriteThink.org’s Word Mover mobile app can
be used to supplement classroom instruction, reinforce concepts taught
in class, offer increased student engagement, and promote out-of-school
literacy through the use of tablet devices and their associated
functionality.
Word Mover allows children and teens to create “found poetry”
by choosing from word banks and existing famous works; additionally,
users can add new words to create a piece of poetry by
moving/manipulating the text.
Today, I also discussed a great leadership opportunity:
California Teachers Association (CTA), Leadership Cohort 2:
Be a part of an essential group of advocates for public education:
Imagine serving in
important leadership roles and becoming a strong advocate for the
teaching profession and for the students you serve. CTA is looking
across the state for 24 teacher activists to join the CTA Teacher
Leadership Cohort. Click HERE to read more about it and apply!
Some pictures of our talented teachers collaborating:
Where did the time go? I was aware that an
hour was going to go by quick, but it really flew. I hardly had anytime to
discuss in-depth any of the classroom strategies, or to go around and hear the
ones of the participants! Click on this link to access my presentation: Presentation PowerPoint
Here’s a recap of some of the classroom strategies
I discussed on Thursday’s meeting. All these strategies focus on the Common
Core Standards. Tonights strategies focus primarily on:
The Common Core Standards are woven into clear and developmentally aligned learning progressions that chart a course from kindergarten through college readiness. A learning progression is a sequenced set of aligned standards that students must master in order to graduate prepared for life beyond school.
The Common Core Standards reflect a spiraling progression that is sequential and yet recursive. As students make progress, the learning targets do not change essentially, but continue to expand in breadth and depth, allowing teachers and students multiple opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills defined by the standards.
The CTA has done a superb job in putting them together into progression spirals. Click on the link below to see the full document.In the document you can see how the anchor
standard SL.1 spirals upwards from Kindergarten to 12th grade.
All the strategies I presented today are geared to be used in collaborative groups. I usually group students in mixed abilities
and there are at least 1 or 2 strong English language models. I use the Steps to Structuring an Academic Class Discussionto guide how I group the students. I also
constantly focus on academic language development. All the lessons that I
prepare always have a vocabulary component. You can look at some of the CCSS
strategies I used in my presentation at CTA Good Teaching Conference, in San
Jose. Click on the following to view them: Literacy Strategies. Our focus on Thursday was to get students talking in our classroom. Not just talking, but having meaningful talk.
How can we get our students to have meaningful discussions?
Provide opportunities for extended discourse &
engagement with academic registers
Develop meaningful collaborative tasks that allow students
to use their full linguistic/cultural resources
Teach students strategies to engage in varied
communicative modes
Use a Metacognition Checklist to help
students guide their thinking process and the ability to monitor their own
learning. This concept needs to be explicitly taught along with content
instruction. I usually start with one item on the checklist, model how I would
use it, then have a few students who have understood the concept demonstrate to
their groups.
If you have ever wanted to teach a lesson using songs,
here are few ideas how to organize a lesson. When it comes to teaching language
you have to plan your lesson thoughtfully so that you evade any hitches that
might come up along the way. The first thing you should do is to select
the song. While this might sound quite simple, from my personal experience, it
may be the most challenging part when planning a “music lesson”.
First begin by considering what do you want
to teach? Setting up the goal of your lesson will help you determine which song
to use. You should choose the song provisional on the topic you are about to
teach. For example, if you want to teach prepositions you should choose a song
with some in the song lyrics. If your goal is to teach adjectives, choose a
song that has a lot of adjectives in the lyrics. You may also choose songs of a
specific genre, like patriotic songs.
Once you have chosen a song, warm up the
students by discussing the title and artist. Have they already heard of that
song? If yes, what did they think of it? If not, can they guess what the song
is about?
Gap fill – leave out some of the
words and give the lyrics to students to fill in. Write all the missing words
on the board for students to choose
from.
Vocabulary in use – students have to use
the words from the song in the sentences. You can use the missing words from
the previous exercise, or you can add other words from the lyrics. This type of
exercise is also good for practicing expressions. You can also have the students
circle the part of speech you are practicing.
Adding missing elements – write the words or
sentences and ask your students to fill in the missing letters or the missing
element of the phrases, for example phrasal verbs missing prepositions.
I also like to put the lyrics in a word
document, use large font, laminate the paper, and next cut the song into sections.
The students can practice listening skills, by listening to the song, then
putting it into correct order. We also
use dry erase markers to circle words we are focusing on. I ask students to
create a word bank using the words we circled. It’s using the strategy close
reading with the lyrics. A close reading is a careful and purposeful
rereading of a text. It’s an encounter with the text where students really
focus on what the author had to say, what the author’s point was, what the
words mean, and what the arrangement of the text tells us.
Here are a two of the songs I demonstrated on
Thursday:
WhenI Was Your Man, Lyrics by Bruno Mars (I taught students pronouns with this
song) The video link below does not have any performance images. It is just the music and lyrics.
There are also some great videos that have songs you can use. Here is one of my favorites:
Using Videos as Stimuli for a Performance Task:
As an assessment writer for Smarter Balanced,
I wrote Performance Tasks in the area of language arts. Most of the performance
tasks I wrote had two pieces of stimuli. They were videos and reading passages.
I particularly like using videos in the classroom because they are great visual
aids. Students love learning with videos. They love to hear, see, and connect
with the content they are learning about. I like using them as stimuli for a
performance task, especially for writing pieces.
Duracell: Trust Your Power - NFL's Derrick Coleman, Seattle Seahawks
These are some components of my lesson plan,
and how I would utilize the videos. I showed the Duracell commercial for this lesson. I discussed the following essential questions:
Writing Task & Prompt:
Teachers Note: guide lessons with
text-dependent questions that require students to use the author’s words to
support their responses.
This is perhaps the most considerable difference
between what the Common Core demands and the previous standards. Teachers tend
to shift students’ attention away from the text too swiftly by asking them what
they think of what they’re reading, or how it makes them feel. The Common Core
asks that teachers develop questions that use evidence from the text to
support responses, to defend opinions, etc. Of course, by engaging in the text
in this way, students will inevitably develop opinions and have reactions to
the text. However, those feelings and reactions should not be the primary
focus of instruction. A student who deeply understands Jackie Robinson’s struggle
to break through the MLB color barrier in Going
to Bat - in Jackie's Footsteps, for instance,will not be able to help having an emotional
response to it. However, the focus when I use a reading passage as stimuli, is to have students respond to the passage by having them cite evidence by providing supporting details from the text.
I provided the students with the reading passage: Going to Bat - in Jackie's Footsteps. Students were grouped in collaborative groups. The students discussed the following questions:
“What are
the power academic words you find in this passage?”
“Can you
think of other historical figures during Robinson’s era that went through
similar struggles?”
“How is Derrick
Coleman’s struggle similar or different to Jackie Robinson’s?”
Once the students have recorded their responses, taken notes on the reading and their discussion, they were given the following prompt: Using two characters, one you have read about
it in class and the other in the video you saw, write an essay about how the
characters overcame obstacles and persevered. Use a thinking map to brainstorm
and organize your thoughts. Make sure you cite evidence from the reading and
video. Your informative essay should include descriptive details and temporal
words.
How can you download videos for your class without having to
fuss with the Wi-Fi at work?
Well, first you have to download the free
software, ClipGrab. It doesn’t take much memory. It is incredibly easy. Go to http://clipgrab.org. Once the software
downloads, just type or copy in paste the URL into the search box. Then click
on the download tab. Choose format, quality, and then Grab this clip. Yup, that
easy. I usually save them on a flash drive and categorize them by lesson. For
instance, the Nolan Cheese Mouse video will go into my informative writing
lessons. There are several other ways to download a YouTube video. This one was
easy for me. You can “Google” other ways, if downloading software is not an
ideal choice.
Fake Text Messages:
This is a great blog on
how to create your own fake texts in class to teach content. It’s just another
tool to get students stimulated and having constructive conversations.
Another place to look for high-quality
teacher-produced lesson plans that align to the CCSS is LearnZillion, a learning platform that
combines video lessons, assessments, and progress reporting, In addition to
sortable Math and ELA video lessons,
they offer a handy Common Core
navigator. This
organization has a great backstory, started by a public school in
Washington D.C. as a home-grown repository for screencast lessons made by their
teachers, they caught the attention of edtech funders and ended up with seed
money to take their idea to a national level.
Wordle lets you generate word clouds from
text that you provide. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts,
and color schemes. Click on the link for 45 interesting ways to use Wordle in
the classroom. These ideas are awesome.
BrainPOP Jr. is a pay site that creates
online animated curriculum-based content that is aligned to state education
standards. BrainPOP Jr. targets kids in kindergarten to third grade. Kids don't
need proficient reading skills to use this audio-heavy site. Lessons all begin
with a brief video and include a wide variety of school and life topics. The
site includes video, game, quiz, and activity sections for science, health,
writing, reading, social studies, and math based on national education
standards.
Here are some pictures of our session. I love how the teachers are so engaged in meaningful talk!
Lastly, these are the posters the teachers generated during the collaboration time during our session. I wish there had been more time to hear their classroom strategies.
