Last day of LALLI

Reading into the day.

Completing some close reading of Mindset: 

On our last day at LALLI, we began by reading into the day.  We read a passage from Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck.  The article supported the fact that cultivating a growth mindset in our classrooms and schools is needed to have students who are successful at learning and feel successful at learning. An important part of cultivating a growth mindset in our classrooms is building positive, strong relationships with our students, getting to know their individual needs. I noticed quite a few of us requesting that Penny copy other sections of the text.  Naturally, she was happy to oblige.
















Next, Mike led the group in a discussion of school planning.  Each school group was asked to think about what made school wide initiatives not work in their school.  This was a subject of interest to everyone ( I think) and was a subject we all had an opinion about.  Many of those opinions were shared  during group discussions.  During whole group discussion, I noticed lots of nods of agreement when inconsistency, lack of accountability, lack of clearly explained purpose, and lack of "buy-in" were raised as reasons why these initiatives were ineffective. We were then asked to discuss with our peers from our specific schools to come up with ideas on what would make initiatives effective at our schools. When we came together for whole group discussion the following ideas were mentioned: using a growth mindset (as opposed to fixed), being patient with the implementation, and communicating results using honest feedback. This entire discussion could have gone on all day and been productive!

Mike facilitating the discussion. "Be the tail rudder."

Effective Chart

Ineffective Chart

My experience at LALLI has been fantastic.  I have added to my teacher "bag of tricks." It is great to have so many new strategies to take into the classroom and use. I cannot wait to get back into the classroom and start the new school year introducing my students to Accountable Talk, Code Switching, and the Growth Mindset. Thank you to all our LALLI leaders/mentors: Deb, Mike, Jean, Amy, Ryan, Marsha, and Penny

Choice Time- Love it!!

Again, today we were given "Choice Time." We were able to pick from four sessions to further our knowledge about grammar, cooperative learning, backwards planning, and text complexity. During the "Text Complexity" session, we learned about the three areas of text complexity, the importance of text complexity and how we as teachers can better implement complex text in our classrooms. This session was eye opening and really made me think about how I value the importance of text complexity in my classroom. What really stood out during this session was the importance of allowing our students to struggle with text and experience "productive failure."

Once back in our LALLI group Natalie, West, Sarah, and Shelly shared some of their ideas about backwards planning.  



This post was typed by Angela Ghafoori (not Whitney). 

The Final Day

We began the day with an exert from Mindset by Carol Dweck.  It discussed the importance of setting high standards for all students and developing a nurturing atmosphere in classrooms.  The article also addressed how to set expectations and be persistent especially with students who are not motivated to do work.  The author reinforced the growth mindset for teachers and students. We discussed in groups the article in the context of our school wide goals.  We reflected on if our goals were in the growth or fixed mindset.

Mr. Slider then led us through a discussion about effective and ineffective initiatives in schools.  This helped us get a mindset of how we should implement our LALLI initiatives in our school that we get staff buy in.  After the discussion we broke out into school groups to revise our goals.  As part of our revisions, we ensured that our goals were meeting the literacy standards and included writing, reading, spoken language,and listening.





We then did breakout sessions with the other literacy groups here today.  The sessions included:
1) Grammar is everywhere
2) Backwards planning in math
3) Cooperative learning strategies with ELLs
4) Text Complexity

We came back together as a group and some of the math participants shared to the group.  Wes and Natalie discussed their backward planning unit for 6th grade unit rates.  Sarah and Shelly shared their plans for the first six weeks of 7th grade math.  Their plan involved using a stock market game to teach positive and negative integers.

As the day was coming to a close, we had some final moments to finish our personal and school goals.  At 12:15 we met as a group and each school presented their final plans to the group.  In the final 15 minutes we made sure to take time to reflect on all of the strategies and topics we had learned over the past two weeks. We then closed the LALLI Institute for the summer.  We look forward to seeing everyone's progress when the group comes back together in the fall.

Edited by: Andrew, Katie, and Win

June 20th Accountable Talk

We began reading into the day about Accountable Talk (AT). We discussed  the“how to" of setting up accountable talk in the classroom. I think one of the most important things to remember about setting up accountable talk is to start building that culture within the first week of school. It is also important to remember to make a quick transition to using accountable talk with content. When students create sentence starters for AT they take ownership and it is in student language.

   We were also given the opportunity to pick our own sessions today. I decided to go to the session on infographics. I was so excited to see this session as I planned my module lessons around infographics. In sixth grade we teach data as our first unit of the year. So I thought students could create a statistical question to research and create a infographic. I would use module creator to look up articles for students to do some research based on their statistical question. When I went to the session I found out about this great website that students could use to create their own infographic. (www.easel.ly/) I think this is a great resource for students to learn how to read visual representations.

For those of you asking for the Ham Boat Recipe

So, sorry I don't have a picture for this one, but you guys all ate it too fast! (Haha)

Ingredients:

8 oz cream cheese
8 oz sour cream
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese (mild or sharp to your preference)
1 package of deli sliced honey ham (I don't know the exact amount, but I use what comes in the little Tupperware containers like the Hilshire Farms or even Kroger brand in that size)
1 loaf french/Italian bread large enough to fill with ham mixture
1 Family size box Wheat Thins (or whatever crackers you might prefer)

Shred the ham with either food chopper or knife, it does not have to be too fine, so either will work. Then mix with cream cheese, sour cream, and shredded cheese until evenly and completely mixed as well as possible.

Make one long cut on bread loaf (hot dog style) but not all the way from end to end so that you can carve out the majority of the inside but not lose shape. Scoop out inside bread and place to side.

Then put ham mixture inside of hollowed bread as evenly as possible.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Serve with hollowed out bread and wheat thins; enjoy!

LALLI 2013 Day 9 (Thursday, June 20th)

Today, LALLI participants were fortunate enough to have multiple opportunities to make decisions about the topics on which they wanted to focus.

Teachers working cooperatively on goals for their classrooms

This began with the Individual Work Time they were given. Many participants used this individual work time to develop their classroom goals. In addition, the administrators were able to give feedback during this process, which enabled everyone to produce, revise, and revisit their works. Many were even able to create a finished product of not only their goals but also their choices for methods of achieving these goals. This was a great work time!

Amy's "Reading Like A Writer" session

After that, participants were given another choice; they were able to choose a break-out session to attend based on listed topics of focus.

For those LALLI participants who chose the "Reading Like A Writer" session with Amy, there were great rewards to be had! They began by reflecting on someone they admired, which is relevant in the lives of not only adult teachers but also adolescent students, so this is a great strategy to use in the classroom. After that, but before moving into the richer content of the break-out session, Amy creatively connected the activity to a powerful speech delivery by Maya Angelou. The transition from this speech then moved participants into a "turn and talk" where they were able to discuss and produce big ideas and questions before moving into the next part of the lesson.

June 20

Mr. Slider closed out the session today by teaching us an activity that we could use with our students to help them better understand academic vocabulary. He gave us a packet consisting of Marzano’s Six Steps to helping students better understand vocabulary. Included in the packet were many, many graphic organizers that could be used with our students as well. This was great because many of the graphic organizers could be used across content. I was pleased to get these resources today because I plan to work harder this upcoming school year to use various strategies to help my students read more effectively. I plan to try the “One Word” activity as a partner activity.