Teacher Language

My favorite thing about teaching is knowing that I'm doing important work each and every day. 

I teach because I want to make the world a better place.

One of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal to create a positive environment is the language we use. On day two of my Responsive Classroom training we spent a good portion of the day discussing the power of our words. Almost everyone in the class (myself included) started to realize they'd developed some bad language habits in dealing with students. To help myself remember some of the key questions and sentence frames we learned to make our language more positive and effective, I made these little signs.

You are welcome to use them. Clicking on any of these pictures will take you to the document.

The thing  discussed about reinforcing language that was the most challenging for us was to take out the mention of teacher approval or of student names. In other words, avoid phrases like, "I like the way Justin is sitting quietly." Instead, use phrases like, "I see lots of students sitting quietly so we can begin learning. The difference here is that in the first example, students are behaving to please the teacher. In the second example, students are behaving for the good of the group.

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Interactive modeling

This week I'm attending Responsive Classroom training. Today was the second day. We covered quite a bit of information. A good part of the morning was spend discussing interactive modeling as a way to teach routines and procedures, social and emotional skills, and academics. Groups made lists of what things we could teach using the interactive modeling procedure. My group made a routines and procedures list. The lists were written in just a few minutes, and they are far from exhaustive! Looking at the lists, it really sinks in just how much work we're doing!

To conduct an interactive modeling lesson, you begin with a statement of what you're going to demonstrate and why.

I want you to know how you can take care of yourself when your pencil breaks so you don't have to disrupt anyone's learning.

Next, you demonstrate the behavior.

Teacher sits at a desk and pretends to write a story. The pencil breaks. The teacher quietly stands up and puts the pencil into the red cup. The teacher goes to her cubbie (supply box) and gets a sharp pencil, then quietly returns to her work.

After the demonstration, the teacher asks the students what they noticed about the behavior.

What did you notice about my actions? If the students miss an important part, like 'you got right back to work once you had a sharp pencil.' The teacher can prompt or fill in the missing information.

Once the behavior has been described, the teacher asks for a student volunteer to model the behavior. (Choose a student you know will do it correctly.)

The student demonstrates the same behavior the teacher just demonstrated while the others observe.

After the student demonstration, ask the students what they noticed about the behavior.

 If students miss an important component, prompt them--Did anyone notice anything about what she was doing with the sharp pencil on her way back to her desk? etc.

The next step in an interactive modeling lesson would be to have all the students practice, but with something like a pencil breaking this might not be practical.

I would probably repeat the student modeling step with just one student modeling.

The last step is for the teacher to provide specific feedback on the student practice.

I noticed that your voice stayed off the whole time you were walking so you didn't disrupt anyone's learning. I noticed that you held your pencil at your side close to you body so everyone you passed felt safe. No one was worried that you would poke them with the pencil, etc.

I've used interactive modeling lessons in the past, but I think I usually talk too much during the modeling parts. This year I'm going to work on decreasing the teacher talk and increasing the student talk.

 

My wish for my students

I’ve been trying to think what experience I could give my students that would really have an impact. It would certainly be nice to give them some exciting trip or real world experience, but that’s not the kind of experience these kids need.

My wish is that I could arrange for every student in my class to have someone who cares about them snuggle with them right before bed, read them two stories, and tuck them in every night at a consistent, appropriate time.

It seems like such a simple thing, but it would make such a difference!

 

Word Study

...teach phonics and word study.

Most of the time I have to stick with the lessons in my curriculum for my phonics lessons, but when I break away, I love to use nursery rhymes and songs to help students with word study.

When I teach a nursery rhyme or song, I introduce it without showing any text.  Sometimes we act it out. We stomp our feet to the beat of the rhyme or keep the beat with our hands in our laps.

To work on self-control and develop inner-hearing, I have a stop/go sign that I use. When the sign says go, we say the rhyme out loud. When the sign switches to stop, we use "magic lips." When you say a rhyme with "magic lips," your lips move, but no sound comes out. I switch the sign several times during the rhyme. The kids really like the challenge!

One year I stumbled upon this website where there are printable mini-books for tons of nursery rhymes.

When I present the text to the rhymes, we identify words/sounds that have the sound we are working on and highlight them.

I recently created this product with some songs to help kids remember vowel sounds.

To get this verse for free, just download the preview file.

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Who Stole the Cookies???

I've been trying to avoid making my blog a big advertisement for my teaching products, so I'll hope you'll bear with me while I tell you about my new creation!



If you're a regular reader, you know that one of my passions is to integrate music with my teaching. If you're interested, you can read about it here, and here.



One of my favorite chants is the well-known: Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar?

To use this chant to teach fact fluency, I pass out number cards to all the students.

Then we say the chant, but instead of student names, I call out facts like "3+3 stole the cookies from the cookie jar!"

The student holding the 6 answers, "who me?" and the chant continues.

This is a fun whole group game that is always different because the students always get different numbers. In this pack, I have a set of addition facts and a set of subtraction facts. For younger students, you could use two sets of the number cards and practice number recognition.

To extend the activity, I have created a set of 3 different domino games that can be used for math centers.

Finally, I wrote some story problems using the cookies theme. There are several different types of problems, and they are easily differentiated.

Please check it out!

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Managing student groups

About two years ago I went to a Kagan training seminar.  We learned lots of strategies to make cooperative learning work. This is a variation on one of the strategies.

I arrange my students' desks into tables with 4 students at each table whenever possible.  To make group work most productive, I try to have a high, middle high, middle low, and low academic performer at each table. The high student sits beside the middle low student, and the low student sits beside the middle high student. At each table, every group member is assigned a season. For my own information, I make all the high academic performers the same season etc.

 

 

 

When I only need one group member to get papers or supplies for the group, I can spin my season spinner to choose one member from each group. (Sometimes I just go with a "season of the day" policy to skip the spinning step.)



If a group needs a leader, I choose one season to be the leader.

If students are sharing information or need to take turns in an activity, I can choose a season.

If I ask the table to discuss a question and come to a consensus, I spin to determine which group member will share the group's idea with the class.

Since the seasons always go in the same order, the procedure for when a group member is missing is easy to remember. If spring is missing, then the next season--summer--would fill in.  If I have to have a group with 3 seasons, they would use this procedure to figure out who's turn it is, or I would just assign one student two seasons.

I added a number under each season, because we also work with just partners quite a bit. For partner talk, I spin a more/less spinner to determine who will go first (or whatever I'm trying to determine.)


If you'd like to give this strategy a try, you can get my desk plates and spinner template for free at my TPT or TN store. Don't forget to leave some feedback love.  I hope you'll follow my store while you're there!

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Read more great ideas about behavior management at these two linky parties!

Quality TV?

I don't get time to watch much TV for enjoyment, but I am a loyal Daily Show and Colbert Report watcher. Instead of discussing those shows which can be somewhat controversial, I thought I'd tell you about some TV shows for young kids that I've been very impressed with.

Most of these shows have apps or computer games that could be useful in the classroom, and there are usually full episodes available online. I've found that as a mother of a 5 year old, I have quite a bit more knowledge in this area than many of my colleagues. :)

My son's latest obsession is with Wild Kratts. In Wild Kratts, the Kratt brothers get to know all kinds of amazing creatures. It's on PBS Kids.

PBS Kids has a free iPad video app that has lots of full episodes. There are so many good kids shows! My first grade team actually used a Curious George episode to introduce the concept of measurement last year. Martha Speaks is about a dog who ate some alphabet soup and suddenly began to talk. She has an amazing vocabulary, and each show focuses on teaching about 5 words. Other shows that teach literacy skills are Word Girl and Super Why. I also like Sid the Science Kid. These shows make great class or individual rewards. Many of them could easily be used to teach standards as well. Also, if you haven't explored the computer games on PBS Kids, you really should. They have games that are appropriate for K-2 at least.




This is Geo, Bot, and Mili.

Another great kids show is Team Umizoomi on Nick Jr. Team Umizoomi is a tiny team that uses mighty math powers to solve problems. They teach about number recognition (mostly to 10, but sometimes further) counting, patterns, geometry, and measurement. I even saw one episode where they taught estimating.

 

Finally, there's Octonauts on Disney Jr. The Octonauts help ocean creatures in distress. Kids learn all about the ocean and the creatures living there. One day my son asked me, "Mommy, is it true that the Mariana  Trench is even deeper than the Midnight Zone?" (Ummmmm..probably...is that what they said on the Octonauts? It's probably right if they said it on the Octonauts, I'm not really an expert on the sea.) One time he started talking about how destructive and venomous the lionfish was, and my husband and I thought it had to be wrong, then we found this online. Note to self: do not question the information your 4 year old learns on the Octonauts. I thought I could keep ahead of him at least until he turned 7!