“The Quest of Essence”

Aligning curriculum to state standards, dolling out rewards or punishments based on student performance, focusing on high standards, and answering factual based questions are all examples of common teaching practices that are seen every day in schools across the country.  Putting students first, putting learning in the hands of the learner, teacher’s facilitating learning by being the provider of experiences, and students creating their own meaning are all examples of the learning theory known as constructivism.  This theory has been seen in bits and pieces throughout classrooms across the country but is gaining ground.  Teachers have been heard to say clearly that they are looking to move away from “teaching to the test”, they are tired of watching their kids motivation for learning diminish, and they want to bring back the connections and meaning they use to have when there was less to cover in the classroom and more time to devote to the process of learning.  Thus, moving to a constructivist classroom is an obvious natural step.

Constructivism is an inquiry-based learning theory that offers a student-centered learning community where students work collaboratively together to solve real world problems.  Four areas that can encompass constructivism include backward design, assessment, effective instructional strategies, and action research.  The focus of backward design is a quest for essence.   Essence is the individual, real or ultimate nature of a thing.  In order for a student to become the ultimate nature of learner, the process of learning must begin with an essential question.  This question takes the learner where they are at, in all of their understanding, and brings them to new heights of understanding.   The teacher fits into this journey by guiding, focusing, suggesting, and continuing to evaluate the progress of the learner.  Effective instructional strategies focus on “high yield” results for the learner.  Making meaningful connections is the key to growing learners.  Marzano wrote about nine principles highly effective schools use to engage students in the learning process.  Marzano found all yield high results.  #9 especially works to promote the deeper learning that constructivism is rooted in.  The focus of assessment is to bring about this kind of deeper learning.  Students create their own meaning rather than the teacher making them learn facts simply to spit them back out on a formal or informal assessment.  Essential learning does not come about in this way.  Lastly, action research can be practiced by using high impact assessments that put the focus on the learner and what meaning they are making rather than on factual outcomes.  Through action research, teachers know how to guide learners into making meaningful connections after analyzing the results of their observations and ongoing monitoring. 

Learning has definitely been observed as growing lower level thinkers who are encouraged and often rewarded for spitting out fact-based material.  In these classrooms, the teacher knows all and “gives” that knowledge to their students.  Constructivism is a learning theory that is student centered and teacher facilitated with the ultimate goal to bring about essential learning.  This learning can be seen through backward design that starts with the essential question and works back, instructional strategies that yield high results, assessments that focus on student understanding, and action research that looks to intervene where learners are at.  When these areas are integrated into the classroom, with the learner at the center, only then can the constructivism learning theory be seen at its best.

Another New Instructional Strategy

Talking Chips

-Response management technique to encourage students who do not often contribute, and limit students who contribute too much to discussions.

 

This week I am going to implement a new strategy that I have never used before.  I am going to use this with my 3rd grade Title 1 groups.  What struck me about this strategy is that it answers the questions that I consistently have with all of my groups.  What do you do when one or two students do all of the talking/answering and the others don't say or get to anything?  Well, this appears to be the perfect "high yield" strategy.  I get several benefits from it including giving everyone a chance to answer a question or tell a story, it also helps to keep track of who has and has not had a chance to share, everyone needs to share something, and it lets the student be in control of when they want to use there chips.  

 

I have been using the talking chips with each of my small groups this week.  I explain to them they can use it to answer any question they want or tell a story about the topic we are exploring.  The strategy is seems to be fun for the kids.  They are excited to get there chips.  Having the chips gives them something to fidget with which has been OK so far.  The children differ in that some use theirs up right away answering questions and story telling and others wait to use them to the end.  They are thinking more about the questions rather than just spitting out just anything that comes to their mind.  The discussion seems to be more thoughtful.  It really is helping curb some of the students who talk all the time and share a story abut everything.  The strategy is forcing them to think and listen more than talk.  I can see another way to use the chips as well.  I want to try and have different students facilitate the discussion by being the questioner and chip taker.  More modeling needs to happen first though.  Overall, this strategy has been fun and is producing more thoughtful discussions with all students sharing.

 

 

New insructional strategy with "high yield"

Year after year, teachers find themselves teaching the same curriculum in the same way to different kids.  Falling into a "slump" by using the same teaching strategies is very easy to do.  Often times the strategies are not effective and don't produce a "high yield" of learning.  Looking at over 1,000 new teaching strategies and aligning some of them with Marzano's 9 principles of learning has led me to a new tool for summarizing strories.  The "Exit Out" strategy is one I tried with my 3rd graders this week.  Instead of verbally summarizing the story we were reading together, 1/2 of the students wrote a big idea summary on a note card and the other 1/2 wrote the detail summary on their card.  Then, each 1/2 shared with the other 1/2 what they wrote before they could leave the group.  Not only is this a jigsaw sharing strategy, they also have to come up with an answer rather than waiting for someone else to summarize the big ideas and details.  This encourages whole group participation and learning from one another.  The students were highly engaged in the reading of the story knowing that they would be responsible for their "exit out" summary.

Three effective teaching strategies

Three teaching strategies that I use every week in my classroom are:

1.       Reading goal setting and progress monitoring:  Every week I check my 3^rd and 4^th grade student’s AR points and to see if and how much they have read the past week.  I meet with each student and we discuss how they did and set a goal for the upcoming week.  I follow up the discussion with progress monitoring, the student reads a passage for one minute and we look at their progress/decline.  We then have a discussion about how they did. 

·        Principle:  This instructional strategy falls under Marzano’s 3rd principle: reinforcing effort and providing recognition.   Following their reading I “Pause, Prompt, Praise” as needed or earned.

·        Effectiveness:  One piece of criteria our learning group came up with was meaningful systems of feedback – this strategy I practice is highly effective with the students as it clearly aligns with both Marzano’s principles as well as our group criteria.  My students regularly see the correlation between how much they read in a week to how they read during their weekly monitoring.  They understand when they read, their fluency goes up and when they slack off reading, their reading fluency declines.  My hopes or goal is that they internalize this learning and continue to read over the summer months.

 

2.      Soar to Success program – Small group around kidney table previewing story and summarizing at end of each daily lesson:  My 3^rd and 4^th grade intervention program is called Soar to Success.  Built into the program are strategies of predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing in a small group. 

·        Principle:  The strategy uses Marzano’s 2^nd and 6^th principle:  Summarizing and note taking and Cooperative Learning.  The kids are face to face predicting, reading, and summarizing.  This type of setting has group accountability naturally built in. 

·        Effectiveness:  The kids work together on the story and finish the lesson by summarizing the “big idea” from the text every day.  They share the big idea with a whisper partner and the partner shares what they heard their partner say.  This encourages active listening and higher level thinking.   They are not just summarizing “little details” but the overall theme or idea.   By working together in cooperative groups they learn at higher levels by scaffolding off of ideas that are shared.  This strategy aligns with Marzano’s principles as well as our group criteria of group work and cooperative learning, meaningful systems of feedback, and making predictions.

3.      Phonemic Awareness – Small groups around kidney table using chips and sound boxes to symbolize letters by only using the sound of the letter.  The Kindergarten students use 2-4 sound boxes copied on colored paper.  This is a Barton Intervention program tweaked for small groups rather than individual tutoring.

·        Principle:  The strategy uses Marzano’s 5^th principle:  Nonlinguistic representation. The chips are symbols representing letters and pulling them down provides movement and active engagement.  This type of setting provides active movement by using manipulative chips along with arm movements.

·        Effectiveness:  The kids work individually but side by side using arm movement and manipulative chips as symbols of letters.  This is a highly effective intervention as it is has been used across the country with students struggling with reading.  Students in the groups have gone from showing little phonemic awareness skills to mastering the benchmark in as little as 2 weeks.  This strategy aligns with Marzano’s principles as well as our group criteria of multiple intelligence including spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences.

Change

This week has been one that has got me thinking about the action associated with the word CHANGE. Often I have been heard spouting comments about how others need to change, "The world is changing, get on board or get left behind!" or "Get over it! What's the big deal, we all have to do it!" At the Maple Grove Hospital they have a beautiful wall hanging of a fall tree with the inspirational message,

"Act Like A Tree: Except Change"



I had no choice but to except change as my father was dying from cancer and he only lived one week past my seeing the picture. The image of the tree has stayed with me throughout these past two years along with the enduring understanding: life is always changing.

This past week I have been asked to change. I was blind-sided by the simple request and I spent a sleepless night literally fighting in my mind and heart with what I was being asked to do. I found it's not so easy when you're the one being asked to do the changing. What has been screaming in my mind like a two year old tantrum is" NO, I WON'T! I DON'T WANT TO AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!" I had to take a deep breath and come to the realization that I either need to get on board or get left behind.

 

Being asked to make changes myself, like I have asked others to do often, has given me the opportunity to "walk a mile" in someone else's shoes.


The "Big Rock" theme from last class affirmed what I already knew and had been living in my life for many years. Long ago I was interested in the theme of living simply. At that time, I read and reflected on many books on simple living and had conversations with friends who also were exploring the same topic. I came to the understanding that I needed to accept the things that I really wanted to pursue and I would know what they were by listening carefully to the voice of my being. I set out to only say yes to what I really felt strongly about and no to everything I doubted or questioned.  I’d like to think that each idea I heard my inner being saying to me is representative of my rocks in my pail.  In order to live simply, I only put into the pail what I really find necessary in life.  Of course my faith, family, friends, and job are in the bucket.  I have two boys so each of them gets a separate rock.  My oldest son needed so much of my time while growing up that he was the biggest rock in the bucket.  I wouldn’t add anything to the bucket until he left home for college.  I was always thinking about going back to school to get my master’s degree but I wouldn’t add that into the bucket until his rock was less big; consequently, I had to wait for 9 years until his rock finally shrunk in size.  Last year he went off to college and so I had room for a new rock and thus began my journey of going back to school.  My program is very important to me so it takes up a lot of space now.  I focus on my schooling because I made the commitment to let it take up much of my bucket.  I find that sacrifices must be made rather than jamming rocks into the bucket that don’t fit.  Our inner being will lead us in the directions we must go only if we become still enough to hear its voice.

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After graduating from college in 1990, I started working in a different profession and hadn't any updates in lesson planning since that date.  Nine years ago I started teaching and still was using planning from the 90's.  Now, college students are being taught Backward Design.  Obviously this is new to me and yet the design has some similar elements of long ago.  One of the differences starting from an essential question.  I really like this change.  I use to start with my goal and objectives.  I know can turn my goal into a question.  I have been teaching my first design unit these past two weeks.  I feel really on top of where I am going and what I want the kids to come away with.  I have been frequently asking myself the essential question to make sure I am sticking to the plan.  Having my questions planned ahead of time is making the conversation more deep and rich.  I use to wing my questioning and it was mostly fact based.  Planning ahead, thinking about enduring understanding, knowledge, and skills, along with assessment has made my travel time theme much more in depth.  In the past I knew what I was going to teach but I didn't have it thoroughly planned out.  Now, I feel much more confident and can reuse them from year to year, tweaking the plan as needed.  I want to sit down with my planning partner and write a backward design plan for all of the themes in the 2nd grade language arts curriculum.