Individual Conferences

Just the other day I had a conversation with a colleague that in a typical classroom, there is generally a four-year span in terms of ability levels between the lowest and highest performing students.  Of course, everyone else is sprinkled somewhere between those two outliers.  Are most of them clustered in the middle?  Likely.  Are they all?  We couldn't be that lucky!

So, how do teachers meet the needs of those students who are at the opposite ends of the spectrum and/or who are not performing at that middle, grade-level area?  Differentiating instruction and activities is certainly one way to address that huge gap. 

However, before a teacher can differentiate instruction, she must first truly understand her students as learners in order to best meet their needs.  Holding individual conferences is one way a teacher can gain this understanding.  Having that one-on-one time to meet with students is invaluable.  This is an opportunity to do informal assessments, give individualized instruction, and have conversations with students about their learning!

Like many things in education, individual conferences can look 100 different ways, depending upon how the teacher is choosing to use them.  For example, 

•  Reading conference:  Teachers may...
• have students read their independent reading book, followed by discussions around specific components of the book
• have students read their independent reading book, followed by discussions around an area of need
• complete a running record 

• Writing conference:  Teachers may...
• revise and edit a piece of writing with the student
• analyze student's writing to determine area of need, followed by instruction/discussion with student (basically an individual mini-lesson)
• analyze student's writing and discuss writing ideas
• analyze spelling in writing and discuss specific components of word work

• Math conference:  Teacher's may...
•  analyze a piece of student work, giving individualized instruction based on student need
• analyze a piece of student work, questioning students to better understand their mathematical thinking
• informally assess a specific skill/concept
• Individualized mini-lesson on area of need

A teacher can hold an individual conference for just about anything that she sees a need for.  The purpose of the conferences may change depending upon the need of the students.  Even when I have writing conferences, they may change from what I plan based on something I discover through looking at a student's writing piece and/or having a discussion with the student.  Our professional judgment is often a guide in terms of what happens at that conference.

Many teachers have specific forms they may use when holding individual conferences with their students.  Others, including me, typically take anecdotal notes during the conferences.  There is no right or wrong way...it's what the teacher finds most useful to record her students' learning and understanding!  

Individual conferences are some of my favorite parts of the day!  I love being able to give students that one-on-one attention and take time to only think about their specific learning needs.  It's a great opportunity to really get to know your students, which also fosters that  relationship building that we know is so important!

 

  

Sympathies Sent

I can't have a teaching blog and not take a minute to acknowledge and send my heartfelt sympathy to our colleagues at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.   My prayers are with the families of the precious young children and the beloved staff whose lives were taken so senselessly Friday. 

 

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Move Beyond Worksheets and Workbooks

Many adults' school experiences consisted of lots of  worksheets and workbooks!  Blah!  Oh, what fun those were, relentlessly filling in the blanks, rewriting the sentences, writing down the answer to the problems, drawing lines to match words with definitions...the list of monotonous activities could go on and on!

Most engagement that came from the worksheets I remember doing, may have involved solving a puzzle when you get all the answers correct or getting to color in pictures with specific colors based on my answers.  Kind of makes me cringe thinking of that as engagement.

As educators, we need to give students access to the curriculum in ways that make them want to take part in the learning process.  By increasing that engagement piece, the students will be more involved in what they are learning, which in turn will likely increase their understanding of the skill.

So, what to do if we don't use worksheets and workbook pages?  Here are just a few ideas!

  

Games!  You can often accomplish the same outcome you do with a worksheet through the use of a game. 

• Instead of having students fill in a bunch of antonyms on a worksheet, have them play a memory game, where they have to find antonym matches and then record them on a recording sheet or in a journal
• Have students play the Product Game, where they have to use logical reasoning to choose factors in order to get four products in a row or to block their opponent from getting four products in a row, instead of filling out a page full of multiplication problems
• Do a vocabulary match game with word cards and definition cards in social studies or science instead of having students sit and write definitions of words or doing a match worksheet
• Have students play Fact and Opinion Kaboom, where they have to identify statements as fact or opinion (unless they pull a Kaboom! strip, which means they have to put  all their statements back into the container

Scavenger Hunts!  A scavenger hunt can be incorporated into most subjects!

• Put informational texts in students' hands, such as newspapers, magazine articles, books, or websites and have them look for:  antonyms, synonyms, homonyms; cause and effect relationships; facts and opinions; possessive nouns; figurative language; etc.  This allows students to see how their learning fits into the world around them
• Have students look for geometrical concepts in their environment:  types of angles, 2-D shapes, 3-D shapes, types of lines, etc.
• Students can find examples of arrays around them when working with multiplication

Projects!  Especially when you want your students to demonstrate their understanding of a skill, have them use their creativity to create some type of project!

• Replace a worksheet about the types of nouns by having them create their own informational text that describes and gives examples of common, proper, possessive, and plural nouns.  They can also show their understanding of the components of an informational text by including a table of contents, chapters/section headings, a glossary, and an index
• Allow students to create a project of their choice (brochure, poster, Power Point, book, song/rap, diorama, model, mobile, etc.) to demonstrate their understanding of a concept in any curricular area
• Create a Geometry Town that must contain specific geometrical concepts
• Have students measure different body dimensions (arms, legs, shoulder to shoulder, shoulder to hips, head, neck, etc.) and then shrink their dimensions by a certain amount (fractions can be differentiated:  1/2, 1/4, 1/3, 1/8).  The students record the shrunken measurements (helps students apply understanding of skills such as measuring linear units, finding fractional parts of a number, fraction equivalences, and multiplying fractions).  They then use those measurements to create a shrunken version of themselves on tag board.  We even connect this activity to writing by having them write a story about their experiences as their shrunken selves
• Students can build actual square or cubic units (inches, feet, yards, etc.), determine what they can find the area or volume of using those tools, and then use the tools to find the area or volume of those objects

Hands-On Activities!  There are also plenty of simpler activities to replace those monotonous worksheets that may not be considered projects because they are not the multiple-step, lengthier activities.

• Students can create a flip book to show their understanding of place value (The flip book would be sideways, with flaps of the book flipping up to show the value of each digit...this can be differentiated easily by making and giving students flip books to reflect numbers of any size)
• Use cubic centimeters to fill actual 3-D containers to find the volume of the containers
• Use square units to find the area of certain 2-D objects (desks, floor, folder, book, etc.)
• Have students complete a graphic organizer describing a character's traits.  They then create a drawing of the character and include the character's traits either around the character drawing or embed them within the drawing
• Help students understand measurement conversions of gallons, quarts, pints, and cups by building a Measurement Person with pieces of construction paper (gallon = whole piece, quart = piece cut into fourths, pints = piece cut into eights, cups = piece cut into sixteenths)

Honestly, the list of alternatives to worksheets and workbooks could go on and on and on and on!  I encourage everyone to think about what skill they want their students to practice or apply, and then think of how they can make that practice or application more engaging!  It may take some time at first, but once you create the activity/project/game/scavenger hunt/etc, you have it to use each year!  :-)   

Holidays in Public Schools

I am now in one of my favorite times of the year!  Within three months, we get to celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas!!  Who doesn't enjoy celebrating one or all of those holidays?

Well, the fact is, there are many kids in public schools who do not celebrate any of those holidays, likely because of their religious beliefs.  So, is it "okay" for teachers to decorate and celebrate holidays in public schools?

Many years ago, I always had decorations up for holidays!  Like I said, I'm a big fan of this holiday season!  It wasn't until several years into my teaching career that I was challenged to think about how this may impact my students who do not celebrate holidays.

If I truly feel my role as a teacher is to make all members of my learning community, even those who do not celebrate holidays, feel welcomed, included, and valued, then is "forcing" them to sit in a classroom filled with Christmas lights, a tree, and other decorations truly reflective of that belief?  I had a hard time arguing that it was.  And boy did that frustrate me at first!  

When I heard about a teacher having a student work in the hallway on a non-Christmas activity because the rest of the class was doing a fun Christmas project in the classroom (as a Jehovah's Witness, he wasn't allowed to be part of that), I knew I had to start becoming more considerate of how every single one of my students felt.  What if that was my child sitting in the hall by himself?  My job isn't to make the majority of my students feel valued, it's to make ALL of them feel valued. 

By keeping my classroom neutral around the holidays, I can ensure that no student will feel excluded, different, or uncomfortable while at school.  I had to put my own "wants" on the back burner and put the needs of my students first and foremost.  I had to realize that by not putting decorations up or doing holiday activities, I wasn't denying any student anything; however, by putting up decorations and doing holiday activities, I was risking isolating a student.  

I am now in my 10th-ish year of not celebrating holidays in school, and I have long moved past my disappointment!!  If students ever ask about doing Halloween or Christmas activities, which is extremely rare, we have the conversation about why we do not include them as part of our instruction.  The students get a diversity lesson right there about respecting everyone's beliefs and ensuring everyone in our community feels welcomed and valued!   Never has a student felt it was unfair or tried to argue that we should change that practice!

Just food for thought!  

Happy Holidays!

Technology in the Classroom

When I think back to when I was in elementary school, I make very few connections to school and technology.  As a matter of fact, the most exciting technology experience I can remember having was getting to print a cover page on an old dot-matrix printer (Is that what they were called???)  for a report I wrote on Italy.  I remember it having some kind of border, which I think was a vine, and a wine bottle on the front.  I thought that was SO great!!!

Now, I watch my 9-, 10-, and 11-year old students operate laptops and iPads as though they have been using technology for years!  Actually, now that I think about it, they probably have!  My 3-year old nephews can take my phone, find my apps, and pick out Angry Birds without an ounce of help from me!

We can always count on increased engagement when we add the component of technology to an activity.  The best part, though, is that not only does using technology engage students, but it also helps prepare them for the real world!  Our world has some type of new technology coming out every time we turn around, so it's important that our students get the opportunity to interact with technology in schools. 

So, what do we do with those iPads and laptops?  The students use them to...

• Publish their Writer's Workshop stories
• Research topics, both that are assigned and that are student selected
• Complete Web Quests on different Social Studies topics (immigration, slavery, government)
• Interact with books, either by listening to a book being read on You Tube or through reading a book on a slideshow (Great way to help differentiate for students who need more support with reading)
• Create Power Points to demonstrate their learning of a topic
• Practice skills through interactive games

Of course, anytime your students do use technology, I always recommend you talk with them about appropriate and inappropriate uses of the technology before they use it.  We have the students help us decide what should happen when students abuse their technology privileges (as well as define what abusing their privileges actually is) and have the consequences set up ahead of time.  

Using technology in the classroom is a great way to engage students, as well as to prepare them for the future!