Puzzle Pieces

So I always mean to be better about blogging here, as this is a much better venue for going on about teaching than at my personal blog where my friends are far more interested in my thoughts on Captain America: The First Avenger than in the newest strategy that I'm trying.

At the moment, we've got just over two weeks before the kids come back, and it seems that the summer has just flown by. Of course, I imagine that has something to do with the two week-long conferences I attended (PEAK Learning Institute in Vail, Colorado, and the GE Foundation's Developing Futures NASA/NSTA Math-Science Integration Conference in Cocoa Beach, Florida) and the Berwick Buddy trip to Maine (also a week). It's left me with a lot of amazing ideas, but now I have to fit all the pieces together. CARE for Kids, PEAK, the 5 E's, BSCS's Science Storylines (from a district science leadership training), and several other things all need to fit into a seamless whole.

I have managed to edit my Understanding by Design Unit Template (backwards planning all the way, y'all), type up a PEAK topic planner, and merge my CIF lesson planner with a PEAK lesson planner. The last of which was the most difficult, though honestly even that wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be. I realized that all the sprinkles, showers, and drips (more on that below) fit in as transitions between the pieces of the lesson that belonged in the CIF lesson. The PEAK soak is the same as the CIF-for-science guided practice. The one awkward spot is where I have a section that could be Making Meaning (i.e. Explain) OR a sprinkle/shower/drip transition, but I suppose that really would vary just based on whether you had a lab-type explore activity that day, which would definitely require a making meaning section to the lesson, or whether you had been working on something that might not need that component. I honestly think I will tend far more to the making meaning portion of that choice, but I am hoping to be more creative with my strategies there than I have been in years past. I'd like to utilize various discussion and notebooking strategies there, as well as some PEAK engage learning strategies.

At this point, I suppose I should outline the whole PEAK water metaphor, which was a key focus in this conference that is just totally mindset-changing. The gist of it revolves around the necessity of exposing kids to content multiple times, as research has shown over and over that they need 28 or 41 or more exposures to really retain and deeply understand content (I'm sure we are ALL familiar with the never learning or crammed-for-test-and-then-forgot learning that goes on in classrooms across the country). In order to do that - to achieve what PEAK calls 28/3 (28 exposures over 3 weeks) - you need to use both pre-instruction and post-instruction. The pre-instruction primes the kids for the main content instruction, while the post-instruction reinforces the information and helps deepen their understanding. The terms are as follows (exposure is deeper each time):

Cloud - this involves having content posters up at least a few weeks ahead
Sprinkle - ex: point out posters & have kids discuss what they notice, choral repetition from visuals, brainstorming around big ideas
Shower - deeper than sprinkle, ex: content songs, choral repetition of important content, and various other strategies where kids become familiar with the basic foundational ideas for the future unit
Soak - this is the actual unit of focused instruction (this is where labs and the like would fall for science)
drip, Drip, DRIP - post-instruction of increasing depth where you intentionally revisit a topic at deeper and broader levels (they call this incremental development)...this includes a great variety of active learning, notebooking, and reflective strategies, among other things

I don't think I've really encompassed how amazing the idea is, as the training just totally opens your eyes and changes how you think about planning, but I think I've got the basics at least. I am not diving all the way into the deepest levels of planning using the PEAK ideas, as it is a bit much to do the first year, particularly with the FOSS and STC modules to juggle as well.

I think I will post more about my ideas for implementation later this weekend. I am trying to pare down my ideas so that it will be realistic. There are a great many techniques I want to try, as well as different strategies and tools, but I also need to ensure that I don't overwhelm myself. The idea is to pick just a few things to try and make sure you get down well, so I want to prioritize. Luckily, there are some things I had already started with last school year, as one of the teachers I work with had shared some of the ideas with me, so those just need to be tweaked a bit, and then I can pick out the new (to me) things that I want to implement.

EE Conference

So, as my school is trying to become an environmental education magnet, I was given the opportunity to go to the Kentucky Association of Environmental Educators Conference this Friday and Saturday in Cave City (and by going I am now a member of the organization for the next year). It was an amazing experience, and I can only hope that I am able to go to the conference again next year. I came out of it with a lot of new ideas for my classroom, and I'm really quite excited.

Friday I went on an all-day off-site session called "Tying the 'ologies Together: A Hands-on Adventure at Mammoth Cave." We actually saw more than just the cave itself, as they took us across the area to three other sites where we were able to see the karst terrain that is geologically connected to the formation of the caves (which happen to be the largest in the world). We were able to see the sinkholes that form from the dissolution of limestone rock, just as the caves do, as well as a spring where water leaves the caves and runs to Echo River and a cross-section of the rock layers (with a few fossils in them!). The caves themselves were amazing - I'd never seen anything like it before. The miles and miles that water has carved out and dissolved away and the different features it leaves behind - wow. As well as the unique creatures that live there - didn't get to see any bats of salamanders, but saw cave crickets and blind (and transluscent) crayfish.

The Saturday sessions were, by and large (well, 2 out of 3), very good as well. The first was put on by a facilitator from Population Connection, where we got a CD full on great activities related to population growth, resources, and consumption. There was a great video that showed population growth across the world throughout world history - it really highlighted the rapid growth since industrialization. We "mined" for chocolate chips in cookies, played an activity that dealt with resource allocation and what happens when people don't consider the needs of others while they consume, and played another activity that dealt with the carrying capacity for environments. Good stuff.

The second was called "The Science Behind Global Warming," which was led by Doug McCoy of the Louisville Zoo (who does a lot else besides working at the zoo, it seems). There were a lot of great little activities that I hope to use with my students during our school's environmental kick-off week next year and possible later on this year as well. I learned more about global warming for myself besides, so that's good.

I of course came away with some books because I am helpless that way. When you add in the delicious food and the concert Friday night by Walkin' Jim Stoltz, it was an exceptional conference (the not so good final session I went to aside).

Overall, I was really pleased to see how many people are commited to improving environmental education - of course, we all struggle to teach our children about all this while trying to deal with the restrictive curriculum and testing we have to do. (I often find myself wanting to expand and include things and then gnash my teeth in frustration as a I cry, "but I don't have the time!") There are some people doing some really amazing things out there, and I hope to learn more from them as time passes. We really need to get our kids engaged and commited, for their own sake, our sake, and the sake of our planet (and the future). Not only that, environmental education engages them so much more and opens the door for better, deeper understanding of concepts. I really hope that I can figure out how to work this all out for my kids.

(And in a final note, as it must be said: I love conferences.)

Differentiating Instruction Conference

I had all these images of posting from the conference about the many, many, many things I learned. But conference sessions and school bonding got in the way a bit. There were so many connections to be made between our class and differentiation, and I was able to make some new mental connections as well as have some "a-ha" moments. For example, 2 other teachers at my school and the principal went to a session just on RAFTs, and I was able to say that I already knew what they were. The same with many of the technology applications - the LA teacher on the other team was much impressed with my and Kristin's book trailer.

But beyond these a-ha moments, I was able to make those new connections. I hadn't realized how easily so much of what we learned about reading, writing, and technology strategies could lead so easily into differentiated instruction. Different products allowed, different processes (allowing them to use different strategies), different ways of starting off. I really think that what we've learned in this class has just opened my eyes to the many possibilities that there are for me to use in teaching. I am really excited to implement them all as I piece together the way that reading, writing, technology, differentiated instruction, classroom climate/management, and my content all fit together - teaching for me and hopefully learning for my students will be a lot more interesting and successful next year.