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.

June 20

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today at Lalli we had the opportunity to choose other literacy sessions to attend. I chose the “Vocab with Ells” session. The facilitator began the session by having us read a passage that contained complex terms. After reading, we worked with a partner to see if we could determine the meaning of the bolded words in the text. It was amazing to me when she told us that students need know 95% of the vocabulary in a text in order to accurately comprehend main points. This made me realize that I need to do more with my students to help them learn academic vocabulary. Also, we learned some great activities we could do with students who struggle with learning vocabulary. One activity involved giving students cards of words with similar meanings. Students would put the words in order according to their level of intensity.  I am extremely excited about the knowledge I obtained from this session and I’m looking forward to trying these strategies with my students.   

LALLI Day 8 (June 19, 2013)

ELA Reading into the Day

Reading into the Day

This morning we were able to start the day off by reading "Is the Sky Falling? The Literacy Crisis" by J.D. Wilhelm. While reading the article, each of us were instructed to pick out the line that felt most important to us and write a short paragraph explaining why we chose that line. This strategy is known as Lifting a Line. We then discussed our lines as a small group and shared out about common themes, similarities, and differences. Within the science content, 3 of the 7 individuals chose the same line: "A high level of literacy is central to academic, economic, and social success" (p. 1). The Box and T-chart showing all of the community members' ideas is pictured below.

Following this, we were able to have one of our own, Shauna, lead us in a community building activity that she does with her students. My Top 5 was not just a great way to get to know your students, but a great way to build trust in your classroom community. Each student writes down 5 things they really wish their teacher knows about them. This includes who you are, where you come from, how you learn best, what you want to learn in the class, and what distracts you from learning. The student then must write a paragraph using evidence to support their claim in the most important thing about themselves. My favorite part was how clear Shauna made it to the students that this information was safe with her. She builds trust by closing the door, folding the papers, and locking them up.

Great Job Shauna!

-Stephanie Bales

Limitations of Test Prep

Mike facilitated a discussion on the Limitations of Test Prep. We addressed the adverse effect that excessive testing has on the educational process. After reading the articles "Don't Teach to the Test" and "Standardized Testing and Its Victims" we had a very spirited discussion. Several teachers fron PLA schools ( Melissa, Whitney, Mary, Robin) weighed in with their experiences in high stakes testing environments. We concluded that it is our responsibility as educators to advocate for our students best interest and not succumb to the pressure to teach to the test.

Does it look like Mike likes to teach to the test?

QAR & Beyond by Elizabeth Best

This portion of the day was about the Question-Answer Relationship. We learned about the signifigance of teaching students complex questioning skills. When students are able to ask qustions to demonstrate their learning they improve their reading comprehension skills. This strategy is highly supported by research. The implications for classroom practices is that as educators we can teach students how to create their own questions and help them disect texts to and make relevent connections and extensions. We also received materials for the application of this strategy.

-Natalie Williams

We have learned so many strategies throughout the past week and a half during LLALI. Today we took the time to discuss what we will be bringing back to our home schools to focus on. We are a diverse group, with diverse students therefore each school chose to focus on one main goal.

Stuart Middle deep in conversation

Seneca: Address student weaknesses in writing and spoken analysis

Westport: Questioning and reasoning strategies

Olmstead: Vocabulary instructional techniques

Myers: Role out strategies during department meetings, goal is to hold everyone accountable

South: Accountable Talk with Rigor

Atherton: Teach students how to use accountable talk

Thomas Jefferson: Role out different strategies in teams, then next year to the whole school

Stuart: Accountable talk as a "norm" for the whole school

Overall our goal is to reach all students in the best way possible. We need to integrate subjects and help students make connections between them. In the real world students will not just use math, or reading individually but intertwined.

-Sarah Reinhart

Photography by Shelly Jackson-Hall 

Day 7 June 18

Reading into the Day utilized the STOP reading method.  Everyone was asked to read "The Perils and Promises of Praise" about the fixed vs. growth mindset of students.  We realized we teach students in both categories, however we need to develop a growth mindset in our students.  Discussions took place around the room about teaching our students about brain growth in the beginning of the year in order to initiate developing a growth mindset.  "It's muddy, it's messy because we're dealing with humans who are developing," said Penny at the conclusion of a lengthy discussion about the importance of praising effort versus intelligence. 

                                                   Penny's "aha" moment!

The next block of time introduced reciprocal teaching.  Deb astounded us with the research that shows with 15-20 days of instruction in this method, students' reading comprehension assessment scores increased from 30% to 70-80%.  She emphasized this strategy is applicable to all content areas.  The method is designed for struggling readers, however it can be used for all students with adaptations.  We broke into small groups after an overview of the strategy to experience the benefits of reciprocal teaching. 

 

To end the day, we had time to look deeper into module creator and reflect on our option to use module creator or provide student evidence of work (based on requirements provided by Penny earlier in the morning).  Several teachers shared their ideas for module creator units and were given feedback from other participants to enhance their unit. 

We're looking forward to tomorrow and more work on our units, lessons, and school literacy plans!

Back at it! Monday June 17, 2013

Today's LALLI session began with a reading activity. We broke out our highlighters and colorful pens and focused on Meltzer and Ziemba's article "Up and Running". Our reading activity was to analyze and code the text as we have been practicing during our meetings. Eventually we came together with our small groups for a structured discussion.

 

Coding techniques support all learners

Stephanie and Sarah are focused - Jason codes like a PRO! 

 

 

I could see this activity being very effective in my middle school classroom. Sometimes it is hard to give students a text and just say "GO!". The drone of "uhms" and "ahs" and "I don't knows" nullifies even the most exciting of article discussions sometimes.This strategy, however, incorporated accountable talk and forces students to speak, pose a question, and then listen and respond only when it is their turn.

 

Our group discussions focused on the challenges we may face incorporating accountable talk and reading strategies in our schools. The key for us centered around getting teacher buy-in, which we think will come through the explicit teaching of various strategies. In addition, continued support and facilitation of the strategies within classrooms must be provided by LALLI members and administrators. We are hopeful and excited to bring our work back!

 

 ~G. Constantin

One last thought for the end of our first week at the LALLI workshop!

Similar to every other day at LALLI, we were fortunate to learn strategies to implement during instruction. A statistic Amy presented may perhaps sum up the reason as to why 30 plus education professionals plan to meet daily for two weeks during the first official week of summer vacation-- to learn new ways to best serve students needs so they become motivated lifelong learners.

Within Amy's presentation she discussed the fact that 7,000 students dropout of high school every day. She asked, what can educators do to ensure students are prepared so they do not feel as though the only option is to dropout?

We, the LALLI participants, called out all the different strategies we have already learned to prepare students.

• Inverted Triangle
• Annotation
• Tapping into Background Knowledge
• Finding Evidence
• Accountable Talk

Our goal is to differentiate per students needs so every student has the opportunity to experience success. Amy continued by explaining the importance of specific aspects of strategies with the "effect size". For example, if students are provided opportunities to collaborate the effect size is 0.75.

Amy's presentation concluded with the "HUGE" importance of feedback, both teacher and peer. Although feedback takes time, "we get back the time with the improvement of writing."

-VW

June 14, 2013 Claim and Evidence

Started out with Slider sharing a strategy, Silent Dialogue citing textual evidence which we felt was an excellent way to get students to think about and process what they read.  This exercise also reinforced text annotation that we discussed earlier in the week.

Marsha introduced a murder/mystery activity, Who Killed Mr. Xavier?, that would be engaging to our students and good to use as a beginning of the year activity to introduce students to Claim/Evidence.  This activity lends itself well to using Accountable Talk because there is not actual solution to the mystery so students are left to argue their own positions using the evidence from the text.

Ryan followed up on yesterdays closing activity where we had to write down 1 gift and 1 challenge that we were given this week.  She randomly distributed the post-it notes we wrote on and we shared them with the group, and when we agreed with someones gift and/or challenge we acknowledged that by nodding our head.  This was strategy we could use in the classroom that would affirm that the students were not alone in their beliefs.  This strategy could be used in a number of ways, in the classroom, to anonymously present ideas.




Sample these to make a claim!

 Going along with the Claim/Evidence theme for the day, our wonderful facilitators tempted us with doughnuts!  Turns out,
doughnuts do have a place in the Lalli schedule!
During the morning we were challenged to form a claim and give evidence for an investigation involving "what makes a quality doughnut?".  We started out with a brainstorming activity to develop the criteria for "What makes a quality doughnut?"  (ie.  yeasty, fresh, toppings, moist, hot, sweet)
Then we sampled three different types of doughnuts and as a table group we constructed a claim for which doughnut was the ideal doughnut. 

 

 Next we shared our claims and critiqued them determining which were acceptable claims based on the indicators.  Then lastly we made changes to our claims if necessary and discussed ways that we could further gather evidence to support our claims.

 Next we continued our practice using Claim and Evidence but took it a step further with linking the two by analysing text, with the help of Mary Poppins!  While the doughnut investigation was more reliant on our personal experience with doughnuts, we were now challenged to cite significant and sufficient evidence from text.

 

We continued our practice of supporting our positions but shifted gears from using a fictional text to a non-fictional, scientific account about vampire bats.

 

 



Using an article from Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading, we again practiced constructing claims, and highlighting evidence from text, but took it step further by challenging the claims of others.

 

Each activity built upon the next, giving us a stronger understanding of how Claim-Evidence-Analysis/Reasoning can be used in our classrooms.

 

Wrapping up our session today, we broke out into our content area groups and created an inventory of the strategies we have been introduced to this week.  Using that inventory we individually set professional goals along with an action plan for achieving those goals.  All in all, it was a productive day :-)

He! Slider, hope you do well at your interview!!!!  We wish you luck!

 

Jennifer and Liz



LALLI: Day 4

We want to extend a special congratulations to Noah on the birth of his baby boy. What wonderful news to begin the day with!

To open up Thursday, our 4^th day of LALLI, Dr. Howell had the group get into a large circle where we took turns giving an interesting fact about ourselves that someone else in the room might share with us. This was a community building activity where we learned new things about each other and what some of us might have in common. Many individuals participating in the program have been to foreign countries, while several others we found out were fans of many different teams and sports.

Today, Michael Slider presented “The Usual”, which is a strategy used to help students annotate text and analyze readings. Annotation is taught explicitly to students as a method to have a conversation with a text and decode difficult passages. After students complete their analysis, they should be given time to share in small groups before moving to large group discussion. Once again this keeps learning student-centered rather than teacher directed. This allows a check for understanding while building classroom community.

After Michael’s presentation, Deb led a group driven activity that we will refer to as the “Must Haves” for Literacy Content in our individual schools. As LALLI Committee members, we will be viewed as “Literacy Leaders” within our schools, and therefore must drive the instructional practice for content based literacy. A few common threads between all schools were: solidifying vocabulary instruction, implementing Accountable Talk across all disciplines and grade levels, and stressing to eliminate the phrase, “I’m not a literacy teacher.”

After our break we were given approximately an hour to read through the books and documents we have received thus far at LALLI. Not only was this mentally stimulating, but it was a brilliant idea, because far too often we attend PD sessions where we receive hefty amounts of material, but do not receive any time to dive into it and hash through the details we find imperative to our instructional practices. This reading time also gave us more fundamental preparation to collaborate with our fellow committee members as we progress through the next six days.

Finally, Marsha presented the Signature RealeLibrary and the RealeWriter. Marsha demonstrated this instructional tool that students to create original text documents using technology, a variety of reading sources/materials, and provides opportunity for publication and presentation. We were then given time to begin our own RealeWriter, allowing us to utilize this technology based educational tool. After we were given ample time to become acclimated with the system, we shared what we had created for use in our classrooms with partners.

To conclude the day, Ryan had us complete an “exit slip” with post its. One was labeled “Gift” the other “Challenge”. We were to write one thing we believe we can implement well in our classroom and will confident doing so. The second was something we feel will be a challenge in our instruction that does not involve time constraints or testing.

Created By: Emily, Robin, and Melissa

Jason's thoughts:

Today was a busy day in the LALLI workshop.

Addressing quesions!

As usual we began the day with a community building exercise:  we were assigned to order ourselves by birthdays without speaking.  There were two groups doing this, and luckily, both groups had several mistakes in their ordering, so no one had bragging rights!  This was a good way to release tension quickly with the group.  We've all been working hard, so even a quick exercise at the beginning was good at releasing tension.

Next, Mike Slider led the discussion with ways to use accountable talk sentence stems while watching videos in class.  This was great!  We all know what happens when students watch videos in class--they listen hard for something that matches the questions on the paper they were given, then they scramble to write it down, and then check out as soon as they're done listening for their questions.  Mike showed us that this doesn't need to be what they see while they watch videos.  Instead we used tools where students wrote down the parts they thought were important and then used accountable talk (AT) verbiage to articulate why those parts were important, confusing, etc.  This way way more engaging than just giving students a list of "listen fors" to go with a video.  He also made a good point about using a rubric on every single assignment so that students know exactly what an "A" looks like for the assignment.  Easier for us, easier for the students!

Amy charting applications

The video that we used with his lesson can be found at ENGAGE NY and detailed the need for higher complexity texts even for our low readers.  This was valuable to me as it highlighted that we need to read deeper and longer with these hard texts to make sure our students are getting value out of them.

After Mike's lesson, Penny then gave a brief talk on what the Growth Mindset is and the research behind it.  Namely, she tried to dispel the myth that early literacy always leads to good readers later on.  An interesting graphic she showed illustrated how readers still fall back over time as the work at school gets harder.  Teachers can never stop challenging and working with students to catch them up and expand their reading skills.

Hard at work!!!

Jean's lessons hit more standards than mine

Jean then gave us a fun project showing how we can use resources from outside our textbook to get engaged with a topic.  For her example, we looked at "Nutrition:  What Do We Think We Know?"  This inspired a lot of fun talk in our groups and got us all engaged writing on our chart paper.  After discussing the results of our brainstorming Jean connected this exercise to argument writing, claims and evaluating evidence.  She gave us three terms (evidence, corroborates, disputes) and after defining these terms as a group, we looked through pre-selected articles to either corroborate or dispute some of the nutrition facts we thought we knew.  This could be done with any topic, and with the awesome module builder website we were introduced to, finding resources shouldn't be tough at all.


The really cool thing about Jean's lesson was flipping through our standards and seeing how many of them she met with one exercise.  Here's a hint--it was a lot.  Plus, the activity was engaging, challenging and fun.  How many of our lessons can we say that about?  Hopefully more, after this workshop completes.

Finally, we got a demonstration of math reading lesson from the book we were all provided at the start of the workshop.  The lesson was fun, as it got us building lists and creatively talking, but again it turned us back to the standards, as we were reading complex texts, looking for terms inside reading and doing math.  It was definitely different than math I remember doing!

After breaking into content areas for a wrap up, we called it a day.  I was exhausted, but had lots of new ideas for lessons that I will be using in the upcoming school year.









Whitney's thoughts:

     If today had a theme I believe it would be entitled, "Getting into the Thick of It." Today's LALLI Institute presenters started the day off with the "Birthday Lineup" community building activity. 
Imagine a room full of teachers organizing themselves in birthday date order without talking! Yes, it was truly a sight to see! So many hand signals, head scratching and re-strategizing took place all within the first 5 minutes.        The "thick of it" was learning to communicate with others who didn't necessarily "speak" the same language. 

There's Shelley working hard in the
foreground while  Mike works the crowd!

Next up, was Mr. Slider who introduced eager participants to a new video evaluation strategy. Mr. Slider's Video "Usual," as the worksheet was titled, guided students to watch educational videos through a lens of inquiry using The Language of Thinking stems we received on Monday. The underlining purpose of the strategy was to help student begin to think about the "take away" after having watched a video in class. Often, students and teachers think about videos shown in class as a "day off from instruction." Mr. Slider's strategy holds the students accountable for analyzing the video to find "the thick of it," and holds teachers accountable for making sure videos are educational, purposeful and relevant. 

      As if our minds were already spinning like the class pet hamster on a wheel, Dr. Penny Howell added to, "the thick of it," by leading our discussion into the research aspect behind adolescent literacy. Dr. Howell's beautiful summary put everything the LALLI Institute stands for in perspective. Dr. Howell spoke on the fact that reading is not a threshold, rather a continuum that gradually shifts from learning to read (grades K-3) to reading to learn (grades 4-12). She also emphasized how all teachers, not just language arts teachers, have a responsibility to teach reading. 

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Day Two--

We began our morning with our "Writing into the day" prompt. The prompt connected to our learning about Accountable Talk and its importance yesterday--How do we envision providing AT opportunities for our students? What challenges might we face and how will we address them? At my table we discussed the challenge of holding students accountable as a possible barrier, but believe that, with commitment, we can make this a successful "endeavor" for our school this year.

The community building activity focused on the question "What is your favorite gift you have received?" You would think that is a simple question, but I struggled (just like yesterday's question about my favorite book or series in middle school).  What I love about these tough questions is how revealing the answers are about the members of our community.

Jean shared a strategy adapted from The Literature Workshop by Sheridan Blau. Fantastic! I will use it, model it, share it. It is a close reading strategy called "Question Funnel."  It works just like a funnel--big going in and small (important ones) coming out. Big questions are asked and by the end of the protocol, just a few questions are left that may require further investigation. If you google Sheridan Blau and reading strategies there are tons of resources! I was going to insert a link, but there were too many to choose from.

To practice the strategy, we read the first three writing standards that introduce the three modes of writing. They look so simple on the page, basically three big sentences, but wow! The conversation was far from simple. With our partners and our table, we discussed our questions and help answer the ones we could. Holding on to the unanswered questions, we then read "Addressing Three Modes of Writing Kentucky Core Academic Standards in the 21st Century: Tips for Understanding Standards, Instruction, & Assessment" (that title is almost as long as an individual standard). Questions were answered and more were asked. The dialogue in the room was powerful--you could feel the learning going on, the ideas being generated, and the new questions being developed. This also clearly showed us that AT is a must in our classrooms or else strategies like this won't be as rich and meaningful. (P.S. We all need to finish this reading by Friday.)

Marsha introduced us to SciJourner: Teens Engaging Science Through Journalism and the Inverted Triangle. Marsha's students learned that writing about science and for a science journal has its own "rules." In order to discover this students x-rayed or "boxed out" text from the journal to get to the "bones" or structure of the text. Each paragraph has its "job," something it does for the overall text. I was so excited about this strategy because it is a perfect one for Reading Information Standard 5, which has been a struggle for us at TJ this year. This strategy also lends itself to the Writing Standard 5, where students need to organize their writing. So getting to the "bones" of an article gave us a perfect graphic organizer for writing that is modeled from the mentor text. "The occasion for writing is revealed." (Jean) Using mentor text helps to "reveal" anything we want our students to learn--here it was structure. We participated in the strategy using "Focus on Learning, Not Grades" by Brad Kuntz.
I love when I am learning a new strategy to use with students, but also getting great text. I will share this article with teachers because it is something we are really struggling with--how do you "grade" seems to be a big question, but the real question should be "how do I (teacher) know my student is learning?" The other big question for us as educators: "How am I leading students to independence?" (Jean) (I hope to see some blog posts to discuss this one!)

I am sharing this blog day with Noah. We are both new to this tool. For the rest of our brief four hours, there should be a post from him--it may be the only post you see if I can't figure it out....

June 11, 2013

Starting the second half of Tuesday, Jean and Marsha introduced ideas for getting students to analyze short texts (in this case, two articles) in terms of purpose and structure, specifically in the way an article's purpose informs the logic of its structure. Marsha did this by introducing the "Inverted Triangle," a guide to the structure of journalistic articles. The guide opens with a "lede" and then proceeds through various sections from there, each section having its own purpose; teachers would have students attempt to identify and then outline/label the various sections of some article. Jean offered the "X-Ray" method in which students would proceed paragraph by paragraph through a written work attempting to infer the purpose of each paragraph based on its content (i.e. Why did the author include this paragraph? What is its function?).

Next, Penny presented further advice about how to make Accountable Talk (AT) effective:

1. Clearly define AT so that the students understand what it is.
2. Model examples of it, so that they understand what it looks like (be explicit). In class, we should:
• press for clarification and explanation
• require justification of proposals and challenges
• recognize and challenge misconceptions
• require evidence for claims and arguments
3. Allow your students to practice AT and give them feedback as they practice.
4. Use AT throughout your lessons everyday.
5. AT should be related to content.
6. Talk MUST be planned for. Write it into your lesson plans.

After Penny, Deborah introduced what turned out to be a popular method for reading a visual image. The strategy is detailed step-by-step as Strategy 7 in the Texts and Lessons for Content Area Reading book that we all received (pp. 58-61).

From there, we broke into our various Content Area groups. In my group, we used Jean's X-Ray method to try to the understand the logic of "On Learning Shame" a powerful section from Dick Gregory's autobiography. If conducted in a way that makes understanding the text--and the intent of the human being behind the text--the ultimate goal rather than the reverse (i.e. in this case, reducing Gregory's writing to a mere vehicle for acquiring skill in analysis), I can see how this could be a powerful method for helping students get more from a piece of writing than other students not using the method and reading it more superficially would get out of it. I'd tried this method before (not calling it "X-Ray") but my way of explaining it to students was much more convoluted than the way Jean explained it to us. She helped me realize I was making things unnecessarily complicated.

June 10, 2013--Day 1

Today we launched our second summer institute of the Leveraged Adolescent Literacy and Learning Initiative.  There were a few familiar faces and many new ones as we greeted each other over the sign-in table, treats (doughnuts from Georgetown!) and coffee, and pretty binders.

Importantly, we started the day by setting norms to maximize our productivity during this ten-day (plus two follow-up sessions) institute.  We had our priorities set right when we started the list with "Snack at will!"  Cell phones can be troublesome, so we designated a "Cell Zone" and determined that technology use stay professional.


After the opening day surveys, Penny led us through a community building exercise in which we learned the name of someone we didn't already know.  Charged with the challenge of learning everyone's name by the end of the institute, I hope to have more opportunities to strengthen that memory muscle!  These opening activities rolled into the discussion about Accountable Talk, a tool that many teachers have already begun using in their classrooms.  The Accountable Talk standards became the backbone for discussions about claims, evidence, and, in our small group discussion, connections to the Common Core Standards.  Last year's LALLI participants, Angela and Whitney, demonstrated classroom posters and discussed the benefits of AT in all the reaches of instruction, including classroom management.

What do students talk about?  Talk about the text, of course.  We walked through a Harvey Daniels' Text and Lesson sequence to demonstrate the power of annotation and to share annotation strategies.  Writing helps students prepare for a discussion and rehearse what they will contribute.  It became apparent through this and later discussions that time to think, time to write, and time to talk will be a recurring theme both in our institute and hopefully in our classrooms.

We closed by headlining our content groups' ideas.  The high school group, led by Jean, shared the connections they made between Accountable Talk and Bloom's Taxonomy.  What a great day!

See typed list

Headliners – Monday, June 10, 2013

Introducing Accountable Talk:

            Accountable talk must be set up within the classroom in order to have success.

            Student buy-ins are necessary for success.

            Participation!

            Have students create sentence strips in their language.

            This year I would like to use better modeling to set up AT in my classroom.

            Stick with it! It takes time to get the system in place, but it works!

Students can use their language within the classroom to express themselves within the standard of AT.

Talk at library voice level, actively listen, stay focused in your group, keep comments, and will definitely use the rubric.

Teach how to do it, be consistent!

I really like that I have a better understanding of how to use AK in a math classroom after today’s meeting.

A good incorporation of AT is through writing also. Setting up norms in beginning of year is key!

WHY?

            AT is a great way to keep students engaged!

            Using AT to benefit ALL students.

So in other words, students internalize knowledge better when they are able to talk about what they are learning.

The students who are talking are the students who are learning

AT is the catalyst for helping students achieve their highest goal in any subject they’re taught.

“Students learn to Own their learning”

HOW

            Explicitly ask kids to connect to other disciplines with their AT

I need to get better at having all students participate in AT.  This can often be done through peer encouragement.

From SS group: With AT – start small and annotate primary sources like the Bill of Rights.

“Own your words.” Be confident in what you (your students) say, back it up with support from text and community.

Allowing students to hold one another accountable and pushing them to challenge one another positively.

I like adding math specific stems to the literacy strategies page.

Coming back to see if idea’s change during AT.

Giving students a time frame - "10 secs." "You have from a countdown of 3." As a high school teacher I sometimes forget the importance to remind students of this.

By Marsha Buerger and Amy Vujaklija