Backward Design Sharing

Backward design is a planning process which starts with an essential question that is guided by common core standards.  The process unfolds with engaging lessons and ends with enduring understanding.  What I love the most about BD is the focus on an essential question that ends with an enduring understanding.  Even though my teaching includes many small groups for 20 minutes at a time, I have begun to always ask the question, "What is essential and what is the enduring understanding?"  If I can't answer these questions, I revamp what I am planning so my lessons are aligned with the BD process.  I also feel more confident in knowing my lessons include the common core.  If an administrator would come into my classroom and ask me to see my plans, I could show them my BD units and how the core is woven throughout the learning.  It has not only changed my focus at school but I use it in my personal life with my family.  My husband is a religion teacher and he likes to process his lessons with me.  I have begun to ask him what his overall essential question is and what understanding he wants the kids to come away with from class.  He is not a professional teacher but I encourage him to use Bloom's Taxonomy with his questioning and learning activities he plans.  At first he just gave me the sideways glance but now he is having fun revamping his style of teaching with the kids.  Slowly, as I incorporate my own learning into my teaching, my overall focus and direction will be clear and to the point, rather than full of fluffy activities that fill time but leave the students with no more understandings than when they started the unit.

One question I have for somebody who teaches small groups for short amounts of time like I do, how do you create backwards design units when you teach skills like letter names/sounds, phonics, or sight words?

Another question I have is how do you include all of the common core standards into BD units when they may not fit any of your created units?  I included many in my reading BD units but some of the standards didn't fall into any design units.

Action Research Abstract

How will implementing gender-specific strategies in kindergarten for a boys only and girls only group affect their growth in pre-reading skills?
 

The question guiding my research is: How will implementing gender-specific strategies in kindergarten for a boys only and girls only group affect their growth in pre-reading skills?  After performing a review of literature on gender differences, I found that boys and girls are wired differently and would benefit from understanding what makes than different and how those differences could be addressed in the classroom.  Children need to be learning to their potentials.  They are misunderstood which affects their achievement.  They could be learning more effectively by matching gender preferences to the teacher’s lesson planning.  By making changes in my teaching I can begin to help students feel understood and can teach to their learning style.  I hope to accomplish implementing my gender different small group lessons by dividing up the students into a boys only group and a girls only group.  From there I will plan more active lessons for boys by allowing them to be louder, using a louder voice when teaching, more competitive games, and allowing them to be more "rough".   Lessons for girls will consist of more cooperative seat work, using a quieter voice, and less competitive games with more collaborative conversational games.  To collect my data on the given changes I am using student surveys, a  teacher journal to write field notes on a daily bases, fall and winter data from FAST - our new “AIMESweb” data collection tool, and NWEA data.

My data collection has not started at this time as I began with kids only one week ago.  Title 1 gets a late start in our school as service is data driven.  I plan to begin my data collection in early November to be complete in late December.  I am finding that I may be restricted in changing the groups up.  My time isn't as flexible as I hoped; thus, I may need to plan a new question and plan new ways to gather data.  I must settle into my schedule before I will know exactly how this is going to work out. 

I have been observing their gender differences "unofficially" for the past two weeks and I am definitely seeing some gender differences amongst my groups.  I am beginning to make some changes and catching myself when I fall into the gender "traps" which mostly include disapproval of boys and how they learn best.  As a result of my interest, I would love to see how gender specific practices could be implemented in other settings throughout the school day.

 

 

 

Differentiation in a Title 1 classroom

Differentiation through flexible grouping was an area that I read more about and investigated how I do or could implement the practice in my already differentiated small groups.  Being a Title 1 teacher already lends itself well to differentiated groups.  I teach pull out groups that are designed strictly around data.  Within the students who fall in the lower 30% of the grade, I have found that there are still several ways to break the groups down further by skill or ability.  This fall I focused even more on grouping these students into differentiated skill groups.  After identifying who would receive Title 1, I met with the other teacher and we divided the groups down into very specific skill levels.  This is allowing us to meet the needs of the students by where they are at in the hopes of closing the gaps quickly.  This has been a challenge in the past as students grow at different paces; thus, the groups need to be very fluid and flexible.  So far this is working really well with our small groups.  The students who have lower skill levels are being led with skills right where they are at.  The students who are just below the cut are getting very different skills and should pop out of service much faster that the lower groups.  Once they transition back to class either new students will take their places or the lower groups will be divide again in even more specific skill groups.  Flexibility is the essence to this classroom practice.

Children’s Principles of Learning - Title 1

Community Building:

1.      Welcoming:  One of the most important principles is being welcoming and inviting to the students.  When kids come to Title 1, they are often nervous because they have to leave their rooms.  Greeting them with a big smile, friendly voice, and fun attitude will help them feel comfortable and safe in the group.  They also are students who struggle more than their classmates.  If they feel welcomed into the small group, they will forget about their struggles and enjoy learning in a different way.

2.      Relationships:  Tied very closely to welcoming is building relationships.  When attempting to build a bond with children, being welcoming, inviting, and friendly will immediately connect teacher and student together.  Kids are very trusting and vulnerable.  By showing them care, taking an interest in their lives, and giving them love, they will thrive both emotionally and academically.

3.      Communication:  Communicating with students is extremely important so they see that they have a hand in their academic journey.  By setting goals, they can choose their outcome.  It is the teacher’s job to move them through the process.  Throughout the process progress monitoring must be done so the students can see the results of their efforts.  Monitoring also guides the teacher in what and how they will assist the student in reaching their goals.

4.      Small Group Safety:  Unlike the classroom setting, students who work in small groups need an elevated level of safety.  They need to know that they are safe to make mistakes.  The best way to grow as a learner is by learning from mistakes. 

Educational Practices:

5.      Identification/Ongoing Progress monitoring:  Before servicing students in K-4 in Title 1, there must first be a through identification process.  Throughout September, January, and April month two assessments are given.  NWEA-MAPS and FAST CBM’s are given to every student to find out where they are at academically and how fluent they can read.  A teacher’s needs assessment is also given out to find out how the students are doing in the classroom.

6.      Content: Throughout kindergarten through second grade, Title 1 reading focuses on the same content areas as the classroom but in a remedial way.  The skills most important to focus on are letter names, sounds with manipulation, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.  If these areas are taught in a small group setting, students will see improvement in their learning with the goal to reach grade level performance.

7.      Small Group Instruction:  Struggling students may fly under the radar in the classroom.  Some students master the art of coping.  Thus, it is not always clear whether have the skills needed for reading or comprehending.  By participating in a small group, the needs of each student can be clearly met and they can grow and learn from one another as well as the teacher.

The above principles are the most important practices that I honor on a daily bases when coordinating a high functioning Title 1 Reading Intervention program.  The principles are essential to put into place when starting from the beginning of servicing students (community building and identification), to the daily servicing over long periods of time (safety, communication, content, and instruction).  These principles can be used in the general education setting as well, but are primarily geared for special services. 

Grit and persistence

Persistence is a quality that is so important to possess not only in teaching but in life.  For me, persistence means to keep pursuing my personal beliefs, goals, and dreams even when life throws road blocks in my way.  Just as water finds a way to flow through and around whatever is in its way, I too need to find a way to pursue that which I perceive to be my beliefs, goals, and dreams.  I have moments in life when I have wanted to quit or shut the process down.  I usually end up moving forward and finding a way to make it happen.  Grit, which is another word for persistence, is a new word that is gaining ground in my life.  I had never heard about or thought about grit before a week ago.  Now, I am intrigued to think about how I live a life having grit and what that means for me.  By becoming more clear about grit, I can better wrap it into my teaching and provide key reminders to my students when they get stuck in a fixed mindset.  I can hardly wait to add "yet" to their phrases of doubt and negativity.  I always have challenged my students to be positive and strong but now I can add new words to their thinking.  My students, struggling readers, must have grit and persistence in order to keep working at something that is so difficult for them on a day to day basis.

Glanz's Virtues in relation to my life

After finishing my survey on virtues in leadership, empathy was on the top of my list while courage and enthusiasm took a close second.  I can empathy playing out in my life in several ways.  In my teaching, this is the area that can actually trip me up in my servicing of at risk students.  I take too many on in my groups.  Best intervention is 3-4 students and I take 6-7 so students aren't left out.  I see every student as my son, who struggled in school.  I wouldn't have wanted him to have been left out of a group, so I don't want to say no to these kids.  I also want to help everyone and I am a rescuer.  I want to fix all the everything that I perceive as a wrong in where ever I am.  I then get resentful because I have no down time and have a hard time getting done what I have to get done.  This is seen in my personal as well as my work life.

AGAPE - Empathy can be seen in Genderativity and Presence.  By creating a classroom of trust and welcoming and helping kids understand how to be kind to each other and themselves are places empathy can be seen.  Without empathy, AGAPE would be missing the G and the P and you would only have a bunch of vowels.  Just like teaching, without empathy, you would just have a bunch of people not caring or interacting with one another with care or concern.

ROL on Gender Differences

My summer reading on my research topic, Gender Differences, was amazing to me.  I absolutely was transformed while reading my research.  By understanding the differences between boys and girls has re-framed my understanding of children.  I truly did not know most of what I read.  Teachers should know that each gender has differences in the areas of vision, hearing, behavior, learning, brain development, and biology/physiology.  Since school has been back in session, I am amazed at how much more patient and understanding I am with both genders.  I use to get into power struggles with kids who were behavior problems....mostly boys.  Recently, I have had several opportunities to help teachers with boys who were having trouble in the classroom.  Now, I understand what they need.  I bring them in my room for movement.  I get them out of their head and help them focus on something fun.  I give them tactile things to play with before talking about what is going on and what needs to happen.  I may not completely resolve the situation but I am not getting frustrated or experiencing feelings of defeat.  By having these few experiences, I know my groups are going to go well when they start.  I will be able to provide just what each gender needs in order to feel more successful and accepted.  What can teachers do?  Becoming educated in the field of gender differences is the best way to implement changes in the classroom.  Since I have been sharing with my coworkers some of my findings, they have come to me with stories of when they had greater understanding of what was going on with the student.  They were excited and so was I.  Nothing but good can come from better understanding and accepting differences in kids.