Developing Your Brain: Focus

Today students will start the day with a fairly straightforward reading response activity.  I will take the time to move about the room observing and answering questions.

I have a few students who resist focus, concentration, and completing the task--this kind of task is not easy or natural for their quick brains and active bodies, yet this kind of task is important since it will help these students to gain strategies to develop more pointed, targeted reading and critical thinking skills.

Hence, I'll make the time to watch them carefully. When they are having trouble with focus, I'll say the following:  I've chosen this activity carefully since I know you will profit from the detail and precision in this activity--it will exercise your brain and help you with specific reading and writing strategies, how can I help you excel at this activity?

Then I'll follow up with some of these questions:

• What do you think a "good job" on this assignment looks like?
• What part of that "good job" is challenging for you? Can I help you? (This is an opportunity to adapt tools and strategies with the child.)
• Do you think you've chosen the best place in the room to complete this task, why or why not?
• Did you realize that you can "skip around with this task" rather than complete it in order?
• Why don't you finish two sections, then check in with me so that we can discuss how you're doing?

At the start of the year observation and focus coaching is very important--right now teachers everywhere are setting the stage for the learning to come, and our attention to learner's styles, needs, and challenges are important to notice and respond to with detail. 

Family Night Presentation?

Most schools begin the year with a parent night, curriculum night, family night, or orientation. This is a time for the teacher to introduce himself or herself to the students' families.  It is also a time to introduce the curriculum program and expectations for the year.  The time for these special nights vary as as does the overall agenda.

What messages will you convey on parents' night?  What information will you request from family members? How will you build support for the students' collective learning goals and needs?

I thought about this today and came up with the sketch below.  Let me know if you have additional ideas.  Feel free to use what I'm sharing as well if it meets your needs

PRIORITIES!

I keep thinking of the "kid in a candy store" metaphor as I prep the schedule and plans for my fourth graders.  There are so many opportunities for learning in our world today--information is everywhere and the tools to learn, explore, and "hack" that information abounds.  Where does one start? Where does one go?

To make this goal even more complex is the fact that we have a tight, lengthy list of standards to meet too, and the standards as they are written pale in comparison to the kinds of learning options available with gaming, hands-on science, creative projects, and more.  Yet, there's the chance to embed the standards into worthy, engaging learning design, but that takes time--time most teachers don't have.

Hence, how will I navigate this road.

First, I'm making a commitment to the big three: reading, writing, and math this year. The standards call me to do this, and students' life-long learning prompts me to do this too.  It's still essential for students to read well, write well, and be facile at math to succeed in our world. Underlying all these subjects is the need to build a strong foundation of critical thinking skills and strategies. The challenge, as stated earlier, is to find as many engaging, meaningful, blended strategies as possible to teach these priorities.

Next, there's a need to get outside of the school to learn.  We'll do this with our theater, farm, zoo, and wildlife preserve field trips. There's also a need to embed hands-on STEAM and we've carved a time for this every Friday. Class meetings, community gatherings, and content will be embedded into our reading, writing, and math units.

Today's landscape of unlimited information and opportunity continues to put prioritizing center stage when it comes to teaching well. How will you meet this challenge successfully?

Reading for Meaning: Details and Strategies

Today students worked on character charts related to our current read aloud, The Gold Threaded Dress.  I moved about the room assisting, listening, and thinking about follow-up teaching.  Their questions were revealing:

• What is a personality attribute?

• What is a physical trait?

• How can I draw a character I haven't seen a picture of?

• Where do I put the information? (Essentially, How do I read a chart?)
  
  

As I think about the common core standard, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions), I realize that we have a lot of work to do in order to grow depth of understanding of story elements and the strategies of visualization and inferencing.

It seems like this will be a year of details as I work to develop students skill, knowledge, and concept related to all the new standards. The challenge is to make this teaching engaging and productive at the same time.

Connected to this challenge is the focus on quality work, focus, and care. It's tough to focus with strength on a topic, a topic that's not natural to you. Yet, thoughtful focus helps children to develop skill and facility--important for overall learning. As I focus on the details--I'll also focus on student effort and result.

A year of details.

Architect Your Learning

Inspired by a colleague's focus on scholarship and Tony Wagner's speech, A New Paradigm in Education, our grade-level team chose the theme, "Be the Architect of Your Own Learning" to build investment and direction for our fourth grade student/teacher learning year.

First we'll discuss the fact that words have history, then we'll specifically discuss the word, architect:

Link

Online Etymology Dictionary

Then we'll begin with a conversation led by this this film.

After that students will craft statements.

Later in tech lab, each student will take a PhotoBooth image of himself/herself, then create an image with a blurb in Google draw like this example:

Finally the team will create an architecture-themed bulletin board of student photos and statements to remind us of our goals during the first leg of the new school year. Student blurbs will also be added to their offline and/or online writing books and portfolios.

Learning: My Head Hurts!

Inspired by a colleague's suggested theme of scholars and Tony Wagner's speech, A New Paradigm in Education, our grade level team decided to use the theme, "Be the Architect of Your Own Learning," as the initial learning community focus for school year 2013-2014.

That theme further inspired the idea by another colleague to create a wonderful bulletin board that combines architecture as we know it with students' architecture plans related to their own learning (image will be shared later). Then, a third colleague challenged us all to find ways to inspire and convey this theme to our fourth graders.

While I hunted for fourth grade friendly films and information related to the theme, I was unsuccessful. Hence, I decided to try out the PowerPoint film process I learned this summer at the MTA Summer Conference.  I was inspired by the artistic film making by the MTA staff and delighted to learn the many tools and strategies used in the process.  But when I sat down and tried to create the film, I had that same old film making feeling--my head hurt! Why?

Film making on any level is very challenging because there are endless possibilities as you match music, images, and words into one coherent statement or story.  This short film I created to lead our learning architect discussion is far from complete, but it's a start as I try out a new process of film making.

The process reminded me once again that learning is not always pleasurable.  In fact, learning can be very frustrating as you build new brain paths, skills, and knowledge.  You'll notice in my film I apply same patterns as I learn the medium, and there's lots of room for edit which illustrates the messiness of learning, the fact that it takes many tries to get it right, to perfect the strategy or result.

A lot of the crankiness and frustration with learning comes from the fact that you can "see it," but you can't do it yet.  And we wonder why struggling learners sometimes act out, get angry, and even, cry.  Learning not only makes your head hurt, but it can be defeating too.  If we don't challenge ourselves as teacher-learners, we won't experience these feelings and we won't be able to empathize with students as they struggle to make meaning and apply knowledge.

The best we can do for ourselves, and for our students, is to lay out manageable and challenging paths with just right supports to encourage and work with one another as we learn. The best learning does challenge us, and if we're challenged without care, we won't learn and we will give up. But, if we're challenged with the right supports, encouragement, and care, we'll thrive.

I'll bring these thoughts to class today as students architect their learning for the start of the year.  If you're embarking on a similar journey, please share your resources and experiences.  Similarly if your "head hurts" too when you're learning, let's share some successful strategies for encouraging each other and our students as well.  Once again, it's the bumpy road of learning.

Students: What Will You Ask of Me?

Each year, the children I teach ask me to meet their needs, assist their journey, and learn.  The children I teach bring me issues, interests, and challenges both familiar and new. No two years are alike, and I always end each year knowing more than when I started.

There's always one or two students that challenge all that I am as a teacher and person--they challenge my viewpoints, lessons, training, and beliefs.  Those challenges have served to teach me, develop me, and make me better as a teacher.

Long ago when I started teaching, I saw these challenges as a problem, an issue to solve.  Now I see these challenges as an opportunity, a chance to grow.

No teacher has all the answers. No teacher knows it all. No teacher can anticipate every issue, yet every teacher can bring an open mind and a responsive intent, an attitude that says, "I am here to serve you; I am here to help you learn and grow with strength; and I am here to care for you this year; lead me."