Starting the School Year off Right

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Janet Abercrombie

As we prepare to warmly welcome new groups of students, it’s great to review much of the advice already in the blogo- and twitter-spheres. I’ll start with my take on new year activities. Then, I’ll share free stuff and free advice from my fellow bloggers and tweeps. Janet’s Beginning of year advice:

You have three major goals the first week or two. First, focus on relationships – both the relationship you have with students and the relationships students should have with one another. Second, establish routines. Third, quickly find out what students already know and what they can do.
Pre-assessing students does not equate with a long series of pre-tests and surveys. Pre-tests and surveys have their place, but choose them carefully. If you can, give students a task related to a learning objective. Circulate the room. Take notes on what you see. Never underestimate the power of anecdotal notes. What do students do when they’re stuck? Can they write legibly and fluently? How do they related to classmates? What else do you notice?
Personalize the room in some way. Ideas are listed in my former beginning-of-year post. You can put up pictures of students and have them write speech bubbles telling about themselves. Having students tell or write their stories gives you good insight into how they learn. It also allows you to pre-assess student writing.
Let not the tyranny of the urgent distract you from your three first-week goals: building relationships with students, establishing routines, and finding out what they already know and can do. Yes, I’m repeating myself.

Free stuff Connie from Herndon, VA has posted a first day writing activity on the Teachers Pay Teachers site. I’d attach it here, but I want to make sure she gets all the credit and that you can look at her other stuff. Laura Candler has published some back-to-school resources that you can download free. Her items include a school year calendar and a way to earn 7,000 Scholastic points to put toward your classroom library. Shelly Sanchez Terrell shares 10 Get-to-Know-You activities and Grahame Knox has given away 40 Icebreaker ideas. Teacher Hub also has a list of great activities. ASCD has some goodies on its Professional Development Pinterest board.

A couple favorites include a student back-to-school poster to personalize the classroom, and note-taking formats. The board also includes a planning guide to help you consider linguistic needs within content lessons. Larry Ferlazzo’s blog is known for its “Best of” lists. One of his posts lists The Best Resources for Planning the First Day of School. I especially like the thinking activity created by Peter Pappas. Some teacher bloggers have added a Linky Party of good advice. Others, like Jason Graham, model how teachers might step back and reflect on life’s big picture before the school year starts. An Edutopia article has videos and additional links to get you started right.

Teacher Hub has published First Day Activities that Students Love, as does the Teacher’s Lounge.

Building Relationships with Students Earlier in the post, I said you need to build relationships with the students. How is that done? Many of my fellow bloggers offer excellent advice. In Ways to get back in the Groove, Chartchums expand on the following advice:

Be consistent
Have reasonable expectations
Teach the routine, don’t just tell it
Practice what you preach
Put yourself out of a job, foster independence

Michael Linsin formulated a different list he called Seven Keys to the First Day of School:

A smile
A peaceful pace
A routine
A story
A plan
A lesson, and
A little fun

In The Huffington Post Glen Lineberry writes that “beginning the year strong includes relationships, relevance, and rigor.” One of the most important things you can do the first week is build relationships with the students. I really like Pernille Ripp’s article reminding teachers that “It’s not how your classroom looks, it’s about how it feels.” Kevin from Just Trying To Be Better than Yesterday reminds us to meet students at the door. Every day. Coach G adds that “how students feel in your classroom influences how they perform in your classroom.”

A Middle School teacher, Kris, offers her “will do” and “won’t do” list. Clerestory Learning lists questions you should consider in order to create a positive classroom climate. Class meetings can help you build relationships with students and help students build relationships with one another. This video shows a practical way to build relationships: The Class Meeting. I looked online for the curriculum and couldn’t find it. But, you can use many of the lesson ideas you see presented below.

Rules Yes, your classroom will need some rules. Share My Lesson includes a number of ideas – so you can pick the one that works for you. Shelley Sanchez Terrell shares a whole webinar on classroom management. What if you get a student who has a reputation for misbehavior? Michael Linsin has some great suggestions for starting off on the proverbial “right foot” with them. Laura Candler has some opening lines that set up a classroom for success – they are fun and worth a read.

Taking Care of Yourself You’re not going to be perfect. None of us ever are. Below is some advice about keeping sane and focusing on continued growth. From Laura Candler at Corkboard Connections:

Believe in yourself
Know you are not alone
Be friendly with students, but don’t try to befriend them
Remember that being fair doesn’t always mean treating every student exactly the same
Plan, Plan, Plan

If you have a few weeks for last-minute professional development, you might look to Mindshift. This post contains a list of ten articles that can add to your instructional toolbox. Those of you in your first year of teaching will appreciate this list of survival skills written by Pernille Ripp. In fact, you might want to tape the list to your desk.

Please let me know how it goes! What advice would you add?

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Classroom Management Essentials [Podcast]

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Janet Abercrombie

A few times each year, I have the pleasure of visiting my colleagues’ classrooms. As my division focused on the implementation of Word Study, I signed up to watch Barry Mernin’s classroom in action.

Yes, his Word Study procedures were excellent. More amazing to me were the absolutely seamless transitions his 4th grade students made from one activity to another.

I had to see if this was a transition practiced for guests or if it was the natural way his classroom worked.

The next morning, I surreptitiously hiked up to the 7th floor and tried to hide outside Barry’s door. He saw me.

My mind raced with possible excuses for being there.

“Can I watch?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“Come on in!” he said in his strong Bostonian accent.

The bell rings. Students move. No one talks. Each student has a place. No one lags behind.

I gawk.

They must be robots, I think. But the students are smiling. They’re leaning in to hear the morning devotion. They listen intently and ask insightful questions.

When faced with the brilliance of colleagues, a teacher can go one of two ways:

Waffle for a week (or month or year) fighting multiple inferiority complexes, or
Enlist the colleague as a mentor and advisor.

I chose the latter.

This week I interviewed Barry. Whether you’re a new teacher or a veteran hoping to tighten up procedures, the podcast below may be the best 16 minutes of professional development you have this week.

Please share any comments or reactions below. If you’d like to contact Barry directly, you can find him at @LarryHermanHK.

If you like what you read and hear, consider subscribing to Expat Educator (below).

10 Steps for Managing Cooperative, Project-Based Groups

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Janet Abercrombie

I’ve become a contributor to one of Scott McLeod’s tech blogs, 1 to 1 Schools. In my latest post, I talk about Book Club Prezis in the context of managing cooperative, project-based groups.

In the post, I break down management into 10 minilessons or steps:

Content comes first.
Choose and defend presentation format.
Divide and conquer tasks.
Develop a timeline for completion.
Group members work as individuals.
Individuals comment on group members’ work.
Groups reflect on their work.
Groups see the work of other groups.
Students and teachers comment.
Celebrate.

To see the expanded explanations, click here.

What are your experiences with cooperative, project-based groups?

If you like what you read, consider subscribing to Expat Educator (below).

Quick Formative Assessments: Essay Thesis Statements

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Janet Abercrombie

In an earlier post, I showed you how Google docs can be used to formatively assess student writing.

My students are now writing literary essays. Following lessons on finding the “big idea” of a short story (character analysis + “most important sentence” analysis and multiple literature letters), I asked the students the following question: What is the story REALLY about?.

Whatever the story is really about can be translated into a thesis statement. When students believe they know the “big idea”, I invite them to check their email and fill out a Google form.

Background on Google forms:

Next, I need to quickly assess whether or not students are formulating clear thesis statements. I use the formative assessment to quickly sort students into reteaching groups. In this case, student groupings are not random. Rather, student groupings are based on student needs.

Here is a talk-through of what I notice about my students’ thesis statements:

The same formative assessment could be done without technology by asking students to write their thesis statements on note cards and sorting accordingly. Total amount of time needed for assessment: less than 10 minutes.

Next steps:

Either my teaching partner or I take the “yellow” group to discuss the next lesson on topic sentences. Alternately, this yellow group might become “experts”, helping the “green” group better refine their statements.
My teaching partner, the learning specialist, or I split the red group into smaller groups to review character traits and “bigger themes” within students’ short stories.

In what ways might you use Google Forms as formative assessment?

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Classroom Management: Quick Student Groupings

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Janet Abercrombie

Early in my teaching career, I learned that if I can manage classroom movements, I can manage behavior. If I can manage behavior, students learn better.

An earlier post discussed the importance of quick and easy transitions between activities. David Ginsburg discusses smooth transitions in terms of controlling without patrolling.

If you strive to have active, collaborative students groups, you need to be able to move students efficiently, getting them on task as quickly as possible. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Draw chopsticks
In my expat environment, I can easily get cheap, wooden chopsticks. I put a student name on each chopstick. The top of each chopstick is then colored blue or red, according to gender. This helps to quick sort groups that have equal numbers of boys and girls. I also informally track the frequency with which I call on boys and girls in the class, consciously avoiding gender bias. The same could be done with popsicle sticks.

2. Pass out cards from a deck of regular playing cards
Without talking, student move into groups with the students who are holding the same number, the same suit, or the same color card (depending how you need them to move and the size of groups you want). A student with a face cards can pair up with another student who has a face card while students with numbered cards pair up. Students with red cards can pair up with another red card student while students with black cards do the same. You can quickly line up students by card values.

3. Manipulate student pictures
Student faces have been covered for reasons of anonymity.

Math lab day stations

Students self-sort based on their current stage in the writing process.

4. Students silently line up by birthday, height or alphabetically by name
Admittedly, this takes a bit more time. But, the activity gets students moving and thinking. They devise clever forms of sign language to accomplish the task. Once students are lined up, you can send the first x-number to a certain activity, the next x-number to a second activity, and so on.

5. Give students a number, then group by “types” of numbers
Make a group of prime numbers, a group representing multiples of five or six, numbers within a given range, even or odd numbers.

What are some of your quick ways to group students?