Wonderful surprises

So my plan this week and next - along with the other 6th grade science teacher and the MMD teacher also teaching the 6th grade science modules - was to introduce the students to living things. Last year the students had a lot of trouble with differentiating between the "biotic" (living organisms and their products) and the "abiotic" (nonliving things) - one large issue was classifying plants as abiotic. They also had trouble with a lot of the vocabulary.

Using one of the old textbooks (Glencoe's Science Interactions: Course 1) we planned to go into a mini-unit on "what is life." In particular, there's an activity observing seeds and rocks in order to compare and contrast them. The idea is that they look the same/similar, and to get the kids thinking about what seeds do that make them living (that rocks don't). From there we would/will segue into the 6 characteristics of life (has cells, grows/develops, reproduces, uses food/water and produces waste, responds to stimuli, adapts to environment).

So today, after talking about the observations they made of living things, I moved into defining organisms. They all already knew the word. Color me shoked - and I'm serious. While they brainstormed in pairs after that on what characteristics living things have (I didn't use the word characteristics, though perhaps I should have), they were constantly surprising me. They knew vocabulary that I didn't expect them to know - "eliminates gas," "respiration," "cells" - and had a far better understanding of the concepts we'll be learning. I had to explain cells to my students last year in about 10 minutes as we began talking about genetics - these guys already know.

And so I find myself wanting to apologize for not trusting the 5th grade teachers to teach the modules (though I had heard from more experienced teachers that science often fell to the wayside in middle school). Once I realized how much they knew, I tried to ask each class to share a bit about what they'd learned the year before. They had done so much. They have a really good basis for what we'll be working on this year, and I'm really happy about that. It'll mean much more success for them, and so I'm hoping we'll be able to go into more depth with the concepts and that I'll be able to breeze by the simpler stuff and leave time for the more extended projects and more difficult concepts.

I'm already reaping the benefits of the modules, I think. Or at least I hope so. *knocks on wood*

Classroom Photos: August 2007

The far side of the room: some of the student desks (note the buckets for materials: no need to get up and go to the pencil sharpener). The cabinets and the sinks. The tables are so big and the room so small, I had to put the tables right up against the drawers.

View of part of the class: the slanted E and tables against the wall, my environmental ed and lab bulletin boards, my desk, and my Williams banner.

My introduction to me bulletin board. Includes pictures of family and friends, a map that traces my route from NH to KY, and photos from my travels abroad.

Starting Anew

I am hoping to keep pushing on with this blog, even though my classes are through. Therefore, "EDTP 620 Class Blog" has been renamed. I intend to use this blog as a place to reflect on my reading, as well as experiences in and outside of the classroom relevant to teaching. This will hopefully promote self-reflection and best practice.

What makes us and our teaching effective?

While Richard Allington's "Effective Teachers, Effective Instruction," I decided I was going to respond about "managed choice" (p. 278) and the importance of self-reflection (p. 279, #1), but then I read the following line as I finished up the essay:
"We can continue to craft curricular plans that will ensure some students will have to struggle. Or we can craft curricular plans that reduce the struggle for almost all students." (p. 287)

This brought - unsurprisingly - the differentiated instruction conference to mind. This is what good teaching is about. As teachers of our students, we must recognize that they all come into our classrooms at different places, and that they have different prior knowledge and different abilities. We need to find out where they are and who they are in order to figure all this out. We can't teach toward the middle and hope everyone does okay or teach toward the top and say that our high expectations will win out. We need to have the same expectations for all (everyone can and will be able to know, understand, and do x, y, and z), but we need to scaffold them up from wherever they are. Give everyone an equitable fighting chance - they all deserve it.

However, I have to say that I disagree with Allington's wording here. Struggle in the classroom is not an innately bad thing - students can engage more with a topic and learn more about it if they have to struggle with the issues and their depths in order to gain an understanding. However, we must ensure that they have the tools, the abilities, the motivation, and the encouragement to make them capable of winning; we must ensure that they have the self-efficacy to know that they can win the struggle and also have the desire to do so. It's hard to find a balance - when is it too easy? when is it too hard? - when we are trying to differentiate for our different students, but I think that it is vitally necessary.

Writing Strategies

I thought that pairing the writing strategies from Content Area Writing: Every Teacher's Guide with new technology tools was a really effective way to encompass these important issues. All the new things that I've been learning have become rather overwhelming - differentiated instruction at the ASCD conference, technology from EDTP 504 and EDTP 620, reading/writing from EDTP 620, etc. It's so much new and exciting information that a girl can have a little trouble juggling it all.

Recognizing that we can pair these new (to us) strategies and tools together makes utilizing them a lot more feasible; it allows us to start small (the best way to make effective change) and still start off with more than one new idea. Additionally, it allows us to show our kids that these areas can be paired together, that reading and writing go hand-in-hand with technology, that they can go hand-in-hand and make what we do more successful than if we approached them separately.

I think that book trailers work in a similar way. They make a connection between technology and reading, and in this case technology does heighten the reading as it promotes it and can also send a message about reading itself. It opens people's eyes to let them see that we can respond to reading via technology - whether it's through blogging, podcasts, book trailers, you tube reviews, or anything else. The two (reading and technology) are in no way separate.

Minomo and Brainstorming

Identify Tool: Mindomo

Identify Strategy: Brainstorming “is an excellent way to get kids started on a new topic by tapping into their prior knowledge.” (45)

Identify Content: Limiting Factors

Value-Added:
Easy to organize and reorganize as discuss (just pull it where you want)
Can save (don’t need to worry about erasing board)
Can easily make copies for all students
Can return to them and revise/add
Can insert pictures and diagrams into the map
Can look at from home/anywhere with internet access

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.