Time to take care of yourself!

With all the normal craziness of the start of a new school year and then adding in a global pandemic, I know things are especially exhausting right now. We have embarked on a new way of planning, teaching, and existing. It's overwhelming, constantly changing, and the unknown of tomorrow causes a lot of anxiety and stress.  There is so much we can't control, so worry about what you can. One thing that often gets pushed to the bottom of the list is taking care of ourselves.  I know we all hear this time and time again but how many of us actually make an effort to take 5 minutes or more for ourselves each day? I am guilty of not doing this regularly but have it as a goal.  

Taking care of yourself doesn't mean taking lots of time every single day for yourself. Every day is different in our demands at work and home. But take some time to focus on you and you alone. 

Here are some ideas:

1. Meditate when you wake up or before you go to bed.  Meditating can take any amount of time you have and is a great way to support your mental health.

2. ASK FOR HELP. At work, if you are stuck, overwhelmed, or have lots of questions ask a colleague, administrator or myself for help. We are all here to support. At home, ask your spouse to do something for you one night to take something off your plate.  Give the kids a new chore that will give you a little extra time. 

3. Go outside during lunch. Disconnect from your technology for those 30 minutes. Walk the halls during lunch or outside when it's nice. Do a quick meditation during a prep or during lunch. 

4.  Write down one or two positive things that happen at the end of each day.  Keep track of them somewhere to look back on when you are having a rough moment, day, or week. 

Try something new or start doing something you used to do again. Give yourself permission to take care of yourself each day and know that it will only make things better. 

Increasing Student Talk - Part 4: Socratic Seminar (with guest blogger Heidi K)

I have been focusing many of my blog posts this year around how to increase the quality of student talk in your classroom.  One such strategy to use is a socratic seminar.  I am by no means an expert at running socratic seminars myself but we have some teachers in our building who are.  I asked one of those teachers, Heidi K, to do a guest post on socratic seminars.  

Enjoy!

I love Socratic Seminars! It is one of the only times during the year where students take 100% control of the class that day. Usually, lessons tend to be somewhere around 70/30, but Socratic Seminars are 100% student-led. In my classroom, we do Socratic Seminars at three points during the year. Each one builds on the skills learned from the previous one:

• First Socratic Seminar: Students focus primarily on asking and answering high-level questions. Before the seminar, we spend time talking about the difference between low-level questions and high-level questions and students practice creating those high-level questions (see the link at the bottom for the resources I use).
• Second Socratic Seminar: Students continue to focus on asking and answering high-level questions but also focus on using textual evidence to support their responses. Before the seminar, we spend time talking about close reading  and finding the best evidence from a text to support their opinions and responses. 
• Third Socratic Seminar: Students continue to focus on asking and answering high-level questions and using textual evidence but also focus on making meaningful text connections that strengthen their discussions even more (see the link at the bottom for examples). 

Doing a Socratic Seminar for the first time can be overwhelming for both the students and teacher. It takes a lot of patience for a teacher to give up control to the students. And, it takes a while for the students to feel comfortable running things themselves. But, I found it to be very worthwhile when they do. Here is a brief overview of how my seminars run on the day, and you can find more detailed information in the link at the bottom:

• First, students sit in either the inner circle or outer circle of desks. The inner circle (the ones actually discussing out loud) get out their books, notes, and other materials. The outer circle (the ones participating in an online backchannel) get logged in to the backchannel that I use most often (todaysmeet.com). 
• While students are given a couple minutes to look over their notes and prepare, I get my rubrics and score sheets ready to go. I also remind the outer circle what they should be chatting about in the backchannel (what the inner circle is doing well, what advice they have for them, and whether they agree or disagree with the topics brought up in the discussion).
• After that, I sit back and just listen. The students run the discussion, and I take notes on my scoresheets to make sure students get the grades they deserve. At a couple points in the hour, we will take a quick break so the inner circle can turn to the outer circle and get advice or suggestions from them (based on what was discussed in the backchannel).
• The next day, the inner circle and outer circles switch.

For a much more detailed description of how I run my Socratic Seminars (and links to all of my resources and other materials), please CLICK HERE. And, feel free to let me know if any of you have any questions regarding Socratic Seminars or would like some help putting one together!

Heidi K (Formerly Vandy)

What I learned at the ONE conference!

Each year going into the ONE Conference I am excited to learn some new tidbit of technology that I can use to enhance my classroom.  I tell teachers to find something in each presentation they can implement soon and, maybe, something that would be a stretch tech goal for themselves.

This year I was able to sit through a bunch of different presentations as I walked around the conference.  The first session I went to was led by the keynote speaker and he had some many quick tech tools to try, it was incredible.  Although he talked about many more, here are a few I thought were pretty good.

Poll Everywhere - A great website to use in a variety of different ways.  (There is also an app for students to log into if you want!) You can post a question and have students submit their thoughts.  The site can be used as a back-channel during a Socratic seminar with questions posted on it.  It can be used as formative assessment to get a quick feel on the students current proficiency.  Questions can be multiple choice, rank order, sortable list.  You can see the results in a variety of ways as well.  You can have many different questions and keep the answers to review.  The options are endless.




Post-It Plus (app) - This app will change your life if you regularly use Post-it note activities in your classes.  You can take a quick picture of the Post - its, with the app, sort them digitally, and have discussions with your class.  If they are Post-its you will use for more than just the moment, you can save them for future use.



Google Slides Q&A - Instead of having a completely different back channel going on while you present, Google Slides Q & A allows the audience to answer and ask questions, and you can see those immediately in your presentation.  Check out the link for a quick how-to.

Increasing Student Talk: Part 3 - Quick Writes

Increasing Student Talk: Part 3 - Quick Writes

Wait! How can you increase student talk with quick writes, that seems weird?  There are different ways to use quick writes during a lesson which will help you increase student talk.

One way to use quick writes to increase student talk is to have students work together to collaborate on the quick write.  As the teacher, you give the class the same prompt, or a different prompt to each group, and have the groups write about the prompt.  The groups can write on post-it notes, poster paper, or any other place you would like to collect their responses.  At the end of a set period of time, the groups can share out what they responded with the rest of the class.

Another way to use quick writes to increase student talk is to give the prompts to students to write about individually.  Then, after a period of time, have the students share with a partner, group, or full class.  This way students have already thought through their responses and may be more comfortable to share what they have to say, rather than thinking quickly.  Having students do a quick write first, before talking, also allows students who take longer to process questions the chance to share their responses.

Quick writes can be done in any content area. Check out this idea sheet for some quick writes in different content areas.  Also doing a search online regarding a specific topic might bring you more ideas.  I have also found some awesome quick write ideas in a book called "Independent Reading: Inside the Box" by Lisa Donohue.  I have a copy in my office if you want to check it out! You could also create an anchor chart around expectations during the two different types of quick writes.

Increasing Student Talk - Part 2: The World Cafe

When we think about increasing student talk and plan for it, student engagement will increase.  A great strategy to use is a World Cafe.  World Cafes can be done in a variety of ways depending on the level and the comfortability of students and teacher.

So what is a World Cafe?

All students are first exposed to similar things.  They do not need to read or watch the exact same thing but there should be a general theme or topic that you would like them to discuss.  Students are then split into groups of any number, usually 4 - 5 makes the best size with one table host/leader.  The groups then all discuss a set of questions led by the table host. As the questions are discussed, the host or all the participants write key ideas discussed on a large sheet.  It is best to think about who will make a strong table host before the class period begins. 

After a set period of time, the students all switch to different groups and the table host stays at the table.  The table host then discusses what their first group discussed and the new group members make connections with it from their previous groups.  After this discussion has "finished" the new groups can then discuss the same questions or a new set of questions.  They will add to the sheet at their table which helps to make their thinking visible for all groups. 

If you wanted to, you could do another switch and go to another table or they could return to their original table to see what was added.  At the end, you can have the table hosts share what was discussed at their table with the whole group.  

A World Cafe can be done in a variety of ways.  Figure out what works best for your students and you.

For more information on World Cafes, here is a great resource.

Increasing Student Talk: Part 1 - Conversation/Sentence Starters

Throughout the school year, I will be focusing on how we can increase student talk in our school.  I hope to provide quick and easy strategies for you to implement in your classrooms and lessons to increase the quality and quantity of student talk.  Because, as we all know, students develop a deeper understanding of a topic if they talk about it.

The first strategy is to teach students conversation or sentence starters to use during class discussions, small group conversations, and socratic seminars/debates.  These sentence starters could be general to be used daily in your classroom, or specific to the type of "student talk" they will be doing.  Sentence starters can be made into anchor charts, posted around your classroom, or taped to the top of students desks for quick reference.  Many times, student talk gets stalled because students don't know how to properly construct a response to a prompt or another student's comment.  If we teach students how to have discussions and give them good sentence starters if they get stuck, the hope is, the student talk will be more engaging for them and students will get more out of the talk.

The pictures included are different ideas of "student talk" anchor charts you could create with your students.  Or use to teach students how to improve their ability to discuss topics in your class.  There are many resources online for you get started with ideas, just start looking!

When deciding what sentence starters or stems to use, be sure to think about the students in your class and the type of discussions in which they will be using them.  Do not provide too many to lower level students and be sure to provide ones that meet the current need of the class.  This should be a work in progress for your class and a skill to develop throughout the entire year.  

Are you a marigold or a walnut tree?

Over the summer I saw this article online.  It is from 2013 but is so relevant each year at school, no matter how long you have been teaching, and in your personal life.

The article talks about finding your "marigold".  Marigolds are often planted near vegetable or other plants.  They are planted nearby because they protect many plants from harmful weeds and bugs.  Marigolds also help the other plants flourish and grow better than average.  In our school, a "marigold" is a peer who helps us grow throughout the year.  They may support us emotionally one day and with curriculum the next.  A "marigold" is the first person to pick you up on a bad day and help you get through it.  They are also the first person to celebrate a successful lesson/day/year with you.  You may have multiple "marigolds" depending on the day and situation. Seek out your "marigold"!  Our school is full of "marigolds".  Who are yours?

On the opposite end are walnut trees. Walnut trees are toxic.  They inhibit growth of plants nearby and eventually kill everything around them.  Many gardners try to avoid planting anything near walnut trees. All of us have our days/moments when we are "walnut trees".  But try not to live as a "walnut tree".  Some teachers are more "walnut tree" than "marigold".  Some teachers are more "marigold" than "walnut tree".

Surround yourself with many "marigolds" and grow.  We are all in this together and the more we are each others "marigolds", the more our students will benefit, which in the end, is the ultimate goal.