Total Participation Techniques (TPT) - review ideas

Quick Writes

 

The following are on-the-spot strategies that can be used as review activities.

How it Works

1.     Select a prompt that you would like students to address.

2.     Give students a specified amount of time to collect their thoughts and write down a response (approximately 3-5 minutes).

3.     Follow this up with a Pair-Share, or Chalkboard Splash*.

Ensuring Higher Order Thinking

Go beyond asking students to explain the meaning of a concept. Ask them to make connections. Use open-ended questions. Provide opportunities for students to understand the broader implications of what they are learning.

Pause to Apply

What prompts can you put in throughout your teaching to confirm that students are understanding and making connections between what is being learned? Use a word bank to ensure that key vocabulary or concepts are embedded within the Quick Write.  

Chalkboard splash*

How it Works

1.    Create a sentence starter, prompt or question for which you would like all students to see all of their peers’ responses.

2.   As students generate responses, ask them to copy their responses onto random or designated places on the chalkboards, whiteboards, chart paper or even sticky notes.

3.   Debrief by asking students to walk around, analyze, and jot down similarities, differences, and surprises.

4.   Ask students to get into small groups and share what they noticed in terms of similarities, differences, and surprises, before asking for volunteers to share.

Ensuring Higher Order Thinking

They address the big picture of what you are teaching. Guide students to analyze their peers’ entries. What new questions emerge from the similarities, differences, and surprises?

 

 

Pause to Apply

This TPT works really well with Quick Writes when responses are kept brief. What sentence starters could you use in the form of a Chalkboard Splash that will help students personalize or see the relevance in what you are teaching/reviewing?

 

 

Family Reading Night

Family Reading Night

 

Thanks to all who came and supported Family Reading Night and thank you Anna Nesbitt for organizing a night of fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FMS ROCKS!!

 

THE END

 

 

 

Text Markings - Paul Quine and Janet Rauch

Text Markings

Paul Quine and Janet Rauch were teaching their students how to summarize with a technique called “Text Marking”. Students were given a passage and were asked to chunk information from each paragraph underlining key terms using the basic signal words to guide them; who, what, where, when, and why. They then put the information into their own words. By marking up the text and writing their key thoughts, students were able to understand what they were reading.  They did this throughout the text. Students put their thoughts down for each section. If students were at a standstill, they would back up and process and read the work to that point. This technique helped to jumpstart their thinking. If students had trouble formulating what to write, they would act out parts of the reading. Visualizing the text, helped the students comprehend what was happening in the story.  

 

A & Q Strategy

A & Q

What is it?

A tool that tests students’ knowledge of a given topic by giving them an answer (e.g. “Henry VIII) and having them generate possible questions (“Who was an English king? Who had lots of wives?)

What are the benefits of using this tool?

In order to teach our students effectively, we need to determine what they already know and understand about the material we’re planning to cover. Involving students in an A & Q session (answer and question, as opposed to question and answer) is a fun and engaging way to do this. The A & Q format encourages students to exercise their creative thinking skills and interact with their classmates. It also prepares them for the learning to come by helping them activate their prior knowledge.

What are the basic steps?

1.     Explain the A & Q format to students. (You’ll give them an answer and they’ll come up with as many possible questions for the answer as they can in a given amount of time.)

2.     Before engaging students in an A & Q session about your content, let them practice as a class using a familiar topic like pets, food, or music, see sample dialog below.

 

a.     Teacher:  If “dog” is the answer, what are some possible questions?

b.     Students: What’s a four-legged animal with fur? What do police use to locate explosives? What is a Dalmatian an example of?  What’s a popular pet that’s not a cat? What’s an animal that helps blind people “see”? What’s man’s best friend? What kind of animal is the main character in Old Yeller?

3.     Use the A & Q format to assess students’ knowledge of a topic you’re planning to teach (or a topic you’ve already taught):

·         Give students an answer that related to the topic in question.

·         Challenge them to think creatively and jot down as many questions for that answer as they can.

4.     Invite students to share their responses with the class, and encourage them to build off each other’s ideas.

5.     Collect and review students’ responses to determine what students already know and understand about the given topic. Design your instructions accordingly.

Be Positive and "Post - It" - Heather, Kirsten, and Stefanie

 

 

 

Heather Anderson, Kirsten Slowinske, and Stefanie Fictum were noticing a escalating amount of negativity between the 5th grade girls and decided to do something about it.

We decided to put up positive post-notes in the bathrooms to motivate and inspire the students. We felt that the students were building up a strong sense of negativity and we wanted to change that. The response from the girls was incredibly surprising. The bathroom started out with 6-8 post-it notes from us and expanded to around fifty written by students- all positive. One student shared with me that it has made a huge difference in some of the girls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Teacher Leader Meeting" Information

Teacher Leader Meeting – ROE #8 at HCC

Feb/17/2015

Renewal for teacher certificate:   If you are up for certificate renewal this year, you may submit your evidence on April 1, this is different than previous years where you used to be able to submit in March

Professional Development Updates & Changes:  If you are taking PD & want to use it towards your renewal certificate it has to be done before

-          July 1. Prior to July 1, 2014 Activities & coursework needed to be related to the teacher’s license, & address the professional standards relative to the area of teaching assignments.

-          From July 1, 2014-January 1, 2015 – activities & coursework would need to meet the new state standards outlined in Section 21B-45 of school code (more details in handout)

-          Beginning January 1, 2015 activities would also need to meet the same criteria as above, and PD hours would need to be issued by an approved provider.

Barat Education Foundation   =   (Teaching with Primary Sources)

This training provided many excellent inquiry based activities and will be shared on the blog throughout the rest of the school year. Here are a few of the activities:

·        Using Photographs to increase inquiry (Why that Photo? activity):  

·        VISUAL Field Trip

·         Quick writes

·        What Primary Sources are & ways to use them

·        Beat in Three Poems

-Resource used:  TPS-Barat educational site ( www.barat-tps.org )  Source to look for primary sources.    >Loc.Gov  >Library Teachers Section  >Using Primary Sources

Illinois Writing Matters:

www.ilwritingmatters.org   - Ideas, lesson plans, & activities for writing per grade level.

Summer PD institute:    Back to Basics         June 8^th        5 days = 3 Grade Credit     

·        The plan for now is to break down each of the domains & address the different strategies, ideas, etc. to support educators (Danielson)

o   They joked & said they should title this training, “Hey, Charlotte! I want my excellence back!”  

·        There will also be breakout sessions to pick from (TBD)

o   If you or someone you know would like to present during this workshop contact Deb Endress at the ROE #8

 

Additional classes to be provided this summer:

·        “MAGIC” – will be co-taught by Tara Hersey and Deb Endress

·        Ag in the classroom

·        Collaborative Inquiry #1 & #2

 

 

 

 

"Selma"- Suzanne Renner/ "Find That Word" - Vocabulary Strategy

 

 

 

 

Suzanne Renner took her classes to the Lindo Theater last Friday, February 20^th, to see the movie “Selma”. Before she took her students to the movie, she set the stage by preparing them in the following way.

First I gave everyone an index card and said I needed them to take a little survey. I just made up something silly – said I needed some ideas for RTI for the rest of the year, or activities they would like to do in class.  To some students instead I gave a copy of the Alabama literacy test, which is 4 pages long and very hard to read. (She used the following website and copied “Setting the Stage” for background, the sample Alabama Literacy Test, and both maps, inside Selma and Selma to Montgomery).  http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/133SEMO/133selma.htm

I said I didn’t think they were quite ready to take the survey, but if they could fill out that test then that would show me that they were, and then I’d let them do it, too. I chose a group, such as left-handers, or if not enough of them, chose students I thought would get kind of riled, or at least challenge it, and boy did they!! They said things like, “why do I have to do it?”  or “it’s too hard; I can’t read it.” Some tried to start, but were frustrated right away.  Most of the students figured out what I was doing, so then I stopped and  projected the test on the screen so everyone could see it. They all agreed it was ridiculous. Then we read “Setting the Stage”, which talked about literacy tests, poll taxes, etc. After that we read the New York Times article ( http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/march-7-1965-civil-rights-marchers-attacked-in-selma/?_r=0)  and looked at the maps. By reading this article to help frontload the information, they were able to learn about a couple of the characters before seeing the movie. So the lesson wasn’t fancy at all, but once we got started they were really into the reading and we did some questioning and discussion along the way.  

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 “Find That Word”

 

 (Richek & McTague, 2008)

 

·          Students are asked to record words they are studying when they encounter them in reading and speech. 

·          This enables students to see the words in different contexts and deepens their vocabulary knowledge.

·          Teacher gives students a list of target words.

·          Students are to write the sentence in which the words appears (students can be given strips of paper).

·          One way to add interest is to see how many a class can collect!

 Devote a few minutes each week to reading the sentences – then post them.

 

 Points can be awarded for:

·         1 point – Student saw or heard the word in speech, print or the media.

·         2 points – Student used the word in speech (peer wrote the sentence).

·          3 points – Student used the word in writing.

 Activity takes a minimum of instructional time, yet encourages notice and use of vocabulary words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Inspiring Words" - Heather Anderson

Being a first year teacher and fresh out of college(ish), every day it blows my mind how much college doesn’t prepare you for actually being a teacher.  Yes, I learned how to write a lesson plan, strategies for teaching different subjects and how to do a million group presentations, but all of that means NOTHING without caring/loving your students  and making that well known.  Some of the most important things I’ve learned these past 6 months could not have been taught to me in any of my education classes. I still don’t know how I do what I do every day, but there is definitely nothing I would rather be doing—J feeling accomplished.

Heather Anderson

 

 

"Fun With Grammar" - Alex Walocha

Fun with Grammar

Alex Walocha decided teaching grammar needed to have some more piazza, so she created an interactive game to help her students in identifying different types of phrases.  Using flyswatters and a power point presentation, Alex’s students were engaged in learning!  Some might think she’s a bit of a risk taker arming children with flyswatters, but in the end, I think her risk resulted in students learning more.

 

Danielson binder and Concept Cube

Mrs. Lafferty's students feel less stress because she's feeling less stress about her Danielson evidence binder.

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VOCABULARY IDEA J

 

Concept Cube (Montgomery, 2008)

 

·         Students receive six-square pattern on tagboard that can be folded up and taped into a three-dimensional cube, which will be 4” on each side.

 

·          Before folding, students write clearly in each square following directions below.

 

·          Each student is given one challenging vocabulary word from a recent reading and asked to:

 

 

1.     Write the assigned vocabulary word in one square.

2.     Write a synonym (word or phrase) in another square.

3.     Write an antonym (word or phrase) in another square.

4.     Write a category or categories it could belong to.

5.     Write the essential characteristics of the concept of this word.

6.     Give one example.

 

·          Cut, fold, and tape the cube.

 

·          Roll the cube and read what comes up on the “top”; the student must tell the relationship of that word or phrase to the original word.

 

 

·          Teachers scaffold as necessary.

 

·          After students know their own cube without any errors, they exchange with a peer.