The Kids Should DEFINITELY See This!

On this beautiful Good Friday in Tennessee, I have to share an amazing website that I just came across.

I just watched Newton's Three Laws of Motion (always close to this former Physics teacher's heart) and loved it.

TKSST was started in 2011, by Rion Nakaya, who curates it with the help of her own two children. She says, "There’s just so much science, nature, music, art, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven’t seen. It’s most likely not stuff that was made for them…But we don’t underestimate kids around here." That's my favorite! I always felt the textbooks I was provided tended to do that, and I would give my students much more detail and background so they could see the big picture. I think it made a difference.

The 2400+ videos shared on the site include science, technology, space, animals, nature, food, DIY, music, art, and animation. What a treasure trove!

Parents, as well as teachers, will find SO much to love about this collection. Here's a video about making the gorgeous Pysanky Easter eggs.

Of course, before or after watching the video, you need to read your kiddos Patricia Polacco's Rechenka's Eggs! This beautiful book was always a favorite of my ESL students, and we would let them draw designs on plastic eggs after reading it. We also made bookmarks and did activities found on Polacco's book page.

Enjoy The Kid Should See This, and please let me know what your favorite videos are!

Nerdy Book Club: Using Picture Books to Introduce New Units

If you don't follow Nerdy Book Club, you should. You'll find more than 70 bloggers there, so you'll be able to hop right over to their blogs to see which of them will be invaluable to you!

The post I'm featuring today is Top Ten Picture Books To Introduce Units Of Study, by Kari Allen. In it, Kari describes how she used ten favorite books to introduce math, science, and other units to her second graders. Here's an example:

 

Library Mouse written and illustrated by Daniel Kirk

She says, "...it was the foundation for our writing (which we did in all subjects.) I started the year off by sharing this book with students." The next day "students would discover tons of stapled blank books that the Library Mouse left," and thus began their "yearlong (hopefully lifelong) inquiry into writing."

I've long believed, that with the emphasis on reading and math that new standards have required, science and social studies could best be taught by using integrated units. How better to do this than to use books and stories to teach both reading and content?

Enjoy Kari's ideas, and may they lead to many more of your own!

Picture Books for Science AND Readworks.org

I'm on the deck this morning with four, yes FOUR, grandbabies 4-years-old and under. They've been having a fine bubbles party, which of course leads this retired (or "expired," as one little friend put it) science teacher to think about science.

I've also been on Pinterest, where I found a link to a great blog post from Erica, over at What Do We Do All Day. You NEED to go:

I love books, and reading, and science -- and I believe in combining them as much as possible. With the emphasis in CCSS on nonfiction, teachers have a wonderful opportunity to teach reading and science as a two-for-one! 

I'm also a fan of Readworks, which provides more than 1,000 leveled literary & nonfiction passages with questions, as well as comprehension & novel units, and skill & strategy units. You simply can't go wrong there.

Erica recommends The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer. Cross-reference with Readworks, and you find a complete 3rd grade unit to use with that book! It includes a detailed lesson plan in three parts:

1. Teacher Modeling and Questioning
2. Guided Practice and Discussion (with a graphic organizer)
3. Student Independent Practice 

If you are new at teaching close reading, this is for you. If you aren't new, well, here's a lesson you don't have to create! As always, you should make it your own by tweaking any part of it.

Be sure to look at all the books in Erica's list, and while you're looking at the Readworks links, check out what else is available there, for FREE. Just register, and everything on the site is yours. Enjoy!

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol

The official SIOP website says that the "Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model is a research-based and validated instructional model that has proven effective in addressing the academic needs of English learners..." but I learned while an ESL teacher that what worked for English Learners also worked for native English speakers.

Implementing the full SIOP Model is a big task that requires training and professional development. I'm suggesting that you look the website over, and try some of the lesson plans and activities provided FREE. Even if you don't have English Learners in your class, you most likely have students who can benefit from the Comprehensible Input, Strategies, Interaction, and Lesson Delivery, as well as the Review & Assessment included in the model.

The lessons shared range from early childhood to Adult/GED, and as you look through them, you will see that careful planning and scaffolding are two of the most important features. The same, of course, is true of any lesson, for every level of students in every content area!

I think you'll enjoy looking these lesson ideas over to see what you can use. You can read more about the protocol and find answers to questions about it here. 

Nelson Mandela 1918 - 2013

The world has lost a great warrior in the quest for freedom and justice. Please don't let this moment go by without engaging your students in reading, researching, discussing, and writing about "Madiba" - Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

I linked to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in a post last July about the book Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Today I'm adding resources that offer retrospectives on his life and work, some of which include lesson plans.

A lesson plan from PBS: Remembering Nelson Mandela

From the New York Times: The Life and Legacy of Nelson Mandela: 1918-2013, a collection of resources that includes

• an illustrated timeline of his life
• a slide show
• images of the anti-apartheid struggle in posters from 1967 - 1994
• memories of Mandela
• his major speeches
• his obituary
• reactions from public figures and NY Times readers

Freedom Fighters, a lesson plan comparing the work of Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Readworks Revisited

I've written before about the amazing ReadWorks.org website, and I have to share today that they've just added 100 new passages. As you can see above, these include fiction and original reporting, in addition to science and social studies. The passages are identified by grade level and lexile. 

This fabulous site also provides Skill and Strategy Units, Novel Units, and so much more! I could go on and on, but I'd prefer that you check it out for yourself. I guarantee that you will find it hard to believe that all of this is FREE!

Foldables FoldiFun Factory, by blogger Mor Zrihen

A quick heads-up to all of you who use and love foldables (and those of you who soon will!) Mor Zrihen, a teacher in south Florida, blogs over at A Teacher's Treasure. She shares her own collection at the Foldables FoldiFun Factory tab on her blog. 

Giving credit to Dinah Zike, who holds the registered trademark for foldables, Mor describes them as "interactive 3D graphic organizers (that) encourage student ownership of study material, provide a kinesthetic component to teaching strategies, and promote long-term retention of academic lessons." 

Below are just a few pics of Mor's cool ideas:

Math

ELA

Vocabulary

Click on over and see what you can use, offered FREE from this great blogger!

Booklists for the Common Core from Reading Rockets

Almost a year ago, I wrote about the many resources available from Reading Rockets, the national multimedia literacy initiative of WETA's Learning Media. 

With the current transition to Common Core State Standards, one of the most useful resources for those of you who teach K-4 is their Themed Booklists. As you create your CCSS ELA units, you will be searching for stories and informational text that you can sequence appropriately for your kiddos. 

And while your reading textbooks will provide a starting point, you will need to search out other quality texts, a daunting task to accomplish on your own! The 150+ booklists found on the Reading Rockets site can help. Below is just a sampling of booklists you'll find there.

• Are You Ready? School's Open
• Books About Our National Parks
• For Laughing Out Loud
• How Things Work
• Jobs People Have
• Passport to the World
• Remarkable Women
• Young Detectives

Every list I previewed consisted of ten books, with a nice mix of fiction and informational text. Check it out - just another awesome FREE resource from this great site. And while you're there look at what else Reading Rockets offers! 

Common Core Resources for ELLs at Colorín Colorado

I have great news for anyone who teaches English Learners, via Lesli A. Maxwell at Education Week. In a blog post yesterday, she reported that Colorín Colorado has added a wonderful new CCSS resource for teachers of ELLs. Lesli had previously reported about the work that Albuquerque, N. M., teachers were doing to "ensure that the district's large number of English-learners would not be left to languish under the more demanding requirements of the common core." Now she reports that "anyone can see the full lesson plans those teachers created, videos of them teaching in the classroom, and interviews of them talking about how it worked." Lessons created by teachers, for teachers? Bravo!

And another "Bravo!" to Colorín Colorado. As an ESL teacher I consulted this amazing website often, and it's no surprise that these resources are now available here. In addition to the work done by the Albuquerque teachers, you'll find information for teachers who "might be trying to figure out what their role in supporting students and content teachers should be in the common-core era" as well as parent resources.

Hurry over and see what you can use, and enjoy the work of teachers who are willing to share - the BEST kind! 

Listen and Read: Read-Along Books from Scholastic

I love Scholastic for many reasons; the newest is their Listen and Read site, where they provide 54 FREE nonfiction read-along ebooks for primary students. Your kiddos can access them on a computer or tablet, or you can use them with a group on an interactive whiteboard. They are sorted by subject and by level, with a good mix of science and social studies topics.

So why is it called Listen and Read? Because each of the ebooks is also an audiobook - by clicking on a "listen" button, your beginning reader can hear the words on the screen as she reads along. A nice feature at the end of each story is a list of vocabulary words.

Here's a sample page from a story for 2nd graders:

I learned about this great resource via a Facebook post by Charity Preston, who writes the Organized Classroom blog. Charity's post linked to a Pinterest pin by Carolyn Wilhelm, who operates the Wise Owl Factory. Both of these sites offer a ton of free resources themselves, and are definitely worthy of a visit.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Cures for the Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 8

Today is Nelson Mandela's 95th birthday, and in his honor I'm suggesting that you read Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom with your students. Amazon's book description says that the book "offers a glimpse into the mind of a great leader, admired across the globe for his dedication to the struggles against apartheid in South Africa. Now the youngest readers can discover the remarkable story of Mandela's long walk from ordinary village boy, to his dynamic leadership of the African National Congress, to his many long years in prison-and, at last, his freedom and astonishing rise to become the leader of his country."  The American Library Association recommends the book for 2nd - 6th graders. 

Today is also Mandela Day, which seeks "to inspire individuals to take action to help change the world for the better, and in doing so build a global movement for good."

If you study this modern-day revolutionary hero, you can incorporate essential skills in geography with history and the government of South Africa where, after 27 years as a political prisoner, Mandela was president from 1994 until 1999. I can imagine using the book to kick off a nonfiction unit for 7th and 8th graders to culminate in a writing assignment that compares/contrasts the struggle to end apartheid with the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Citing evidence after close reading and perhaps using graphic organizers to organize ideas? Common Core to the, well, core!

For more resources, check out the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory website, which includes digital archives and multimedia resources.

Enjoy learning along with your kiddos, and please, let this book and others in the series help cure your CC Blues!

Start with a Book. Read. Talk. Explore.

I LOVE Reading Rockets, and I'm thrilled to share with you their companion website, Start With a Book, launched just last year to "ward off the learning loss that many children experience over the summer. (It) offers adults engaging, research-based ideas for getting kids into books all summer and beyond."

What a great selection of resources for parents, librarians, and summer program teachers including

• 24 Summer Reading Themes (with suggestions for fiction & nonfiction books to read with your child, hands-on activities & crafts, and much more)
• Read-Aloud Tips (including tips for reading nonfiction, using mental imagery, and building comprehension & critical thinking skills)
• Fluency-Building Ideas 
• Book Lists 
• Literacy Resources

One of my favorite sections is Fluent Kids, where the importance of fluency is explained, "Fluency is the bridge between decoding words and understanding what has been read," and followed with an abundance of suggestions and tips for helping your child build her confidence and skills so she can focus her attention on what the story or text means. Your kiddo will love buddy reading with you, rereading favorite books, recording herself reading, or listening to audiobooks from your public library.

So, go on. Click over to Start with a Book, and read, talk, and explore...all summer long! 

An Excellent Find: E is for Explore!

You are going to LOVE the site I have to share with you tonight! I came across it via a science activity posted to Pinterest, and was I ever amazed and delighted when I followed the link to Erin Bittman's blog, E is for Explore!

Erin blends graphic design, her original career, with her current path toward becoming a teacher, to "develop unique learning activities, search the internet and compile additional great ideas from other sources." Her site is chock-full of manipulatives and activities useful across the curriculum, from literacy to math and engineering, and she provides easy links to sites that she shares.

Since Easter is coming soon, I'll show you images from one of Erin's posts, wherein she shares activities from inferencing to fractions using Plastic Eggs: 

Great, huh? Click on over to Erin's blog, where "all 'E is for Explore' activities conform to state common core curriculum standards."

And you're welcome! :-)

Why Inquiry? RAD

I met Dr. Judy Willis a few years ago, when she presented her RAD ideas to science teachers and professional developers at Middle Tennessee State University. In order to share her research at later PD sessions, I summarized it, and I want to share the handout that accompanied my sessions with you. (It was sent to her for approval first.)

Her story is unique: "Dr. Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist in Santa Barbara, California, has combined her 15 years as a practicing adult and child neurologist with her teacher education training and years of classroom experience. After five years teaching at Santa Barbara Middle School, and ten years of classroom teaching all together, in 2010, Dr. Willis reluctantly left teaching middle school students and dedicated herself full-time to teaching educators."

Why Inquiry? 

All children are born scientists who learn about the world around them through exploration and discovery. 

Inquiry learning is twice as efficient as “drill and kill.” It builds content knowledge, understanding, and reasoning. 

• It increases students’ engagement so they develop knowledge conceptually 
• Students construct understanding through investigations rather than by rote memory. 
• Students develop reasoning skills that enable them to handle open-ended tasks, to think creatively, and to make decisions rationally. 

Even when students are rigorously taught the facts, they don’t necessarily develop the reasoning skills they need to succeed.

I. Lessons should be organized to engage students’ brains in order for them to acquire content knowledge. 

Our planning should revolve around this question: “How can my students use inquiry to acquire knowledge and develop understanding so that knowledge can be applied to other areas of their learning and their lives?” 

During inquiry activities, YOU facilitate as YOUR STUDENTS make meaning for themselves; you may need to provide direct instruction at multiple points during an inquiry-based unit.

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The goal of our teaching is that acquired information gets to the conscious, cognitive brain so that new learning reaches long-term memory and becomes useable, transferable knowledge.

To reach the “conscious brain,” sensory input must be Reticular Activating System “selected.” The reactive brain responds to stimuli with fight/flight/freeze.

We must get past that filter with stability and familiarity, and then captivate R.A.S. attention/stimulate curiosity with

• Change, novelty, surprise 
• Prior knowledge activation 
• Advertising 
• Color, costumes 
• Music, movement 
• Discrepant events 

Some ideas to make your lessons R.A.S. selected:

• Walk backwards into and around the room before beginning a discussion about negative numbers 
• Put on a “thinking cap” to indicate that what comes next is very important 
• Show a book trailer to stimulate interest in a novel before reading it. 
• Use color-coded highlighters for labeling key words, important points, etc. 
• Set up a think-pair-share or a jigsaw so students know they will be doing something with information they gain during a reading/listening activity 
• Start with a current or local event – anything that promotes “buy-in” 
• Alert students to information that connects with their personally valued goals 

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The Amygdala responds to interest, relevance, and pleasure. Students (or people) who are in a positive emotional state have an open amygdala leading directly to the prefrontal cortex, where long-term memory resides. Students who are stressed have no passage to the prefrontal cortex. Brain scans show a direct path to the prefrontal cortex during a happy state and no activation of the passage to the prefrontal cortex during sadness, anger, or fear.

Causes of school stress include

• Being embarrassed to read aloud 
• Anxiety about taking tests 
• Physical and language differences 
• Bullying and cliques 
• Frustration with material that is too difficult – zone of proximal development 
• Boredom - many children have been robbed of the joy of successful learning because of boredom caused by teach-to-the-test rote memorization. 

The greatest fear reported by students is making a mistake in a whole-class setting. Supportive classrooms are those where students feel safe enough to take the risk of participating and being “smart”...and even risk making mistakes! 

Inquiry is de-stressing.

• It builds a classroom learning community that invites participation by all students. 
• It connects with prior knowledge. 
• It invites pleasurable engagement through prediction. 
• It provides learning practice where students learn to use their reflective rather than reactive brain networks. 

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The Dopamine response is inspiration, motivation, curiosity, creativity, persistence, and perseverance. Dopamine is released when we are given choices as well as when we are moving, collaborating, enjoying music, and feeling self-appreciation. The results are acting kindly, interacting well with friends, expressing gratitude, and feeling optimistic.

Choice = ownership on the part of the learner 

Group learning increases dopamine and builds pleasure-associated memories. 

Acetylcholine Bonus – When dopamine levels are high, acetylcholine is released and “...by enhancing the response to sensory input, high levels of acetylcholine enhance attention to the environment...by enhancing the response to external input, high levels of acetylcholine enhance the encoding of memory for specific stimuli, allowing more effective and accurate encoding of sensory events.” ~Michael E. Hasselmo & Jill McGaughy, Dept. of Psychology, Center for Memory and Brain, Boston University

Consolidation occurs in the hippocampus, where new information is encoded with previously stored related knowledge:

If it is isolated, 

it isn’t consolidated. 

It MUST be related! 

Patterning is matching prior knowledge to new information to encode new memory. Long-term memories are made through pattern construction in the brain – Piaget’s “schema” are mental maps or categories of knowledge that grow through pattern association. Good inquiries don’t have a simple, single answer (just like real life) - they encourage students to recognize and build patterns, thus connecting new information into their brains’ neural wiring. 

II. Unless something is done with a new memory, it is lost in less than a minute. Relational memories are turned into understanding (and stored in long-term memory) by mental manipulation in the prefrontal cortex. 

John Dewey said, “We don’t learn from experience, 

we learn by reflecting on it.” 

“Dend-writes” for mental manipulation 

• Draw a picture, diagram, or graphic organizer of what you learned. 
• React to the most surprising thing you learned today. 
• Reflect on how something you learned connects to something you already knew. 
• Predict what will come next. 
• Make a note of what is still confusing to you. 
• Write about a new/better understanding that you have. 
• Describe a strategy you used to solve a problem today. 
• Describe a “so what” – the one thing you’ll remember most about today’s lesson. 
• Write about how this lesson connects to things you learn in other subjects. 
• Compare/contrast, categorize, or summarize an aspect of the lesson. 
• Create an analogy that explains what this lesson reminded you about or how it fits with what you already knew. 

You can use your students’ dend-writes to:

• Know how accurately the lesson was understood 
• Correct any misperceptions at the next class meeting 
• Ask students whose responses were especially good to share those insights with the class as review or to promote discussion. 
• Post good responses as “back-pats” 

III. Inquiry-centered learning builds reasoning skills or “executive functions.” The prefrontal cortex is only about 15% of the brain’s volume; we have to make it count! Our goal is to turn information into usable, transferable knowledge. 

The brain’s executive functions include

• Judgment 
• Prioritizing 
• Analyzing information 
• Decision making 
• Goal planning 
• Organizing 
• Inferring 
• Synthesizing 
• Integrating 
• Problem-solving 

Call it HOTS, critical thinking, or whatever you like...this is our goal!

More Common Core Writing Practice at the New York Times

For your own best practices, here are two recent Common Core Practice Writing Tasks from The Learning Network at The New York Times.

An argumentative writing task about the late "technology wunderkind," Aaron Swartz: A Data Crusader, a Defendant and Now, a Cause.

Michael Francis McElroy/The New York Times

A narrative writing task about Richard Blanco, the son of Cuban exiles who was the 2013 inaugural poet: Poet's Kinship with the President.

Craig Dilger for The New York Times

I highly recommend not only these tasks, but also that you check out the Common Core Practice that appears each Friday on The Learning Network's page! And, as always, I ask that you leave a comment if you use Sarah Gross and Jonathan Olsen's great ideas.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

On this 57th Inauguration Day AND Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, here are some of the best online sources for teaching your students about Dr. King. And since there are only ten days until February, what a great lead-in to Black History Month!

The Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service

The King Center in Atlanta, Georgia

The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University

The NAACP

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1964:

Teaching by Questioning for the Common Core

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

Socrates (470-399 B.C.) 

I like this quote attributed to Socrates, whether he said it or not - and I agree that the brains of our students are not empty vessels that we teachers are to fill from our vast store of knowledge.

From most accounts, Socrates did believe in and practice questioning as a means of teaching and learning. While students may find it easier to be given facts that they can regurgitate on paper-and-pencil tests, Rebecca Alber, in her Edutopia article "When Teaching the Right Answers Is the Wrong Direction" says, "...students are all too often on a quest for the Correct Answers, which has little to do with critical-thinking development..." 

Critical thinking, citing evidence, rigor and relevance...if you, like most U.S. teachers, are implementing the Common Core State Standards, you must incorporate skillful questioning in your teaching strategies.

Here's good information, paraphrased from the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College in Minnesota on How to Use the Socratic Method in the Classroom:

• Plan significant questions that provide structure and direction to the lesson.
• Phrase questions clearly.
• Wait at least 5 to 10 seconds for students to respond.
• Keep the discussion focused.
• Stimulate the discussion with probing questions.
• Periodically summarize what has been discussed, on board or projector.
• Draw as many students as possible into the discussion.

Remind students that they are expected to do the following:

• Participate when called upon.
• Answer questions as carefully and clearly as possible.
• Address the whole class so that everyone can hear their answers.

For more information, LEARN NC includes an article by Heather Coffey on the history and theory of the Socratic method of teaching, with directions for conducting Socratic circles and seminars.

Finally, for a no-holds-barred article on why questioning is the way to critical thinking and therefore understanding, read "The Role of Questions in Teaching, Thinking and Learning" from The Critical Thinking Community:

Questions of purpose force us to define our task. 

Questions of information force us to look at our sources of information as well as at the quality of our information.
Questions of interpretation force us to examine how we are organizing or giving meaning to information. 

Questions of assumption force us to examine what we are taking for granted. 

Questions of implication force us to follow out where our thinking is going. 

Questions of point of view force us to examine our point of view and to consider other relevant points of view.
Questions of relevance force us to discriminate what does and what does not bear on a question. 

Questions of accuracy force us to evaluate and test for truth and correctness. 

Questions of precision force us to give details and be specific. 

Questions of consistency force us to examine our thinking for contradictions. 

Questions of logic force us to consider how we are putting the whole of our thought together, to make sure that it all adds up and makes sense within a reasonable system of some kind.