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.

Welcome Back!

Welcome Back!

Hopefully everyone enjoyed their summer and is slowly starting to settle into the school year.

I am personally very excited for this school year.  The goals developed by the SAIL team for the school year will give us a great focus and help to improve North and our students for years to come.  As we develop our students to be well-rounded young adults, we need to remember to be well-rounded adults ourselves.  Being well-rounded adults means taking time for yourself and your family away from work.  Make sure to take time away from work each weekend and just enjoy! This will leave you refreshed and ready to put your best foot forward each day at work.  (My husband used to give me a maximum of 4 hours for the whole weekend to do work stuff. And then he would take everything away from me!)

As we start to get into the school year, feel free to stop in with things you need support with in the classroom.  I will do my best to support you in anyway I can.  If you want to schedule an appointment with me please use ktorzala.youcanbook.me to see when I am available.

I look forward to working with everyone throughout the school year.

Kristin

End of Year Educator Effectiveness

It's that time of year!  Time to finish your Educator Effectiveness work for your end of the year evaluation.

So what do you all need to do?

1.  SLO - For your SLO you need to give your final assessment to determine if your student group has met the goal you set out for them.  After the assessment, complete an ASW form.  Once you have looked at your data, fill out the end-of-interval section on the SLO document you started at the beginning of the year.

2. SLO Scoring Rubric - Your next step will be to think about your score for your SLO.  A scoring rubric is available on the Google Classroom for Educator Effectiveness.  Look this over before your meeting to gauge what you think your score will be.

3.  PPG - Complete your end-of-year review on the PPG document you started at the beginning of the year.

4. Self-Review - Look at your self-review from the beginning of the year and, informally, reflect on where you feel you are now.  During your end-of-the-year meetings, you will discuss with your administrator or myself your scores on each component. Know where you feel you are to promote good discussion.

5. Artifacts - Artifacts should be collected for each component in Domain 1 and 4, for your SLO, and your PPG.  Each year, whether on summary year or not, you will be collecting artifacts.  Come up with an organized system that works for you to collect your artifacts.  (Many different templates have been shared as ideas. If you want to see them, just ask or look on Google Classroom.) You should have a couple artifacts for each component but you can use the same artifact in multiple places.  Remember to identify the year you added the artifact.   Your artifact collector should be shared with your administrator by April 30th, so they can start reviewing them prior to your end of the year meeting.  Make sure all your links are able to be opened by your administrator.

Quality over quantity, keep that in mind.

6. Schedule meeting - You will need to schedule an end of the year meeting with your cooperating administrator if you are on summary year.  (Details regarding the deadline for this will be out shortly.)  If you are not on summary year, you need to schedule a meeting with me on ktorzala.youcanbook.me.

If you would like to meet with me prior to discuss end of the year stuff, please schedule a meeting with me at ktorzala.youcanbook.me.

As always, let me know if you have any questions!  The end of the year is near :)

A little bit of stuff. Part 2

Purposeful classroom environment
When was the last time you really spruced up the environment of your classroom? When did you last update the "things" on your wall?

Many teachers have gotten better at displaying student work on walls, creating word walls, and making student centered/created anchor charts.  But does everything on your walls have a purpose in your current unit? Or do you just leave everything up and not really change it?

When putting things up, make sure they have a current purpose in your classroom. Change things that are on the wall regularly.  Have the walls work for you and your students.  Make reference during lessons to what is displayed on the walls.

Collecting Artifacts
Have you started collecting artifacts for your end of the year evaluation?  Collecting artifacts doesn't have to take a ton of time if you spend a little time each week working on one.  Schedule fifteen minutes each week to pick an artifact, assign it to components, and write the reflection.

Always remember it is quality over quantity.  For example, a project thoroughly laid out, showing differentiation for students, and project objectives, could hit every component in domain 1: planning and preparation.  You need to collect artifacts for domains one and four.  You only have to collect artifacts for domains two and three if you feel it is necessary.

Collecting artifacts is a large part of your evaluation.  Even if you are not on summary year, you must be collecting artifacts.  During your summary year, your evaluator will look through your body of work, over the full three year period, to determine your "score" for each component.

How you collect artifacts is up to you.  Just be sure everything is able to be viewed by your evaluator.
If you want help with collecting artifacts, feel free to contact me or your administrator.

A little bit of stuff!

Often teachers ask questions about the walk through feedback or just questions on general topics in our building.  So here is a little on a few of the topics that have come up recently.

Anchor Charts: Many teachers have drastically improved the creation and usage of anchor charts in their classrooms. But are those anchor charts still relevant to what you are doing today, or are you just leaving them up because they are pretty? Now that you all are comfortable with creating them, push yourselves to find ways to have your students create them or co-create them with you.

Increasing the "I do": Model your thoughts. Model your way of doing something. Activate prior knowledge.  The more you model, the more successful our students can be.  Check out my blog from November 23, 2015 on this topic.

SAMR and the ONE Conference: Now that the ONE conference is done, what are you doing to level up?  Start with "leveling up" one lesson, in one class, and expand from there.  If you currently "live in" Substitution, start moving more of your lessons into Augmentation.  Remember you can't always live in "Redefinition", visit there when you are ready.

All of us fill out an "I commit" tag.  What did you commit to doing? Are you actively working to committing to what you wrote?  What can you do to accomplish the commitment you made?

Conferring vs Touching Base: Conferring and "touching base" with students are very similar things.  The main difference is the purpose of the conversations happening.  When conferring, you have a specific content focus.  There tends to be more teacher:student collaboration when conferring and the
student drives much of the conversation.  The picture to the right shows the roles of the student and the teacher when conferring. When you "touch base", it may be just a quick check in, "how are you doing?", "Your grade is this and this is what you need to do to improve it".

Check out this article for more on conferring!

Leveling up: Getting ready for the Waukesha ONE conference

Waukesha ONE is getting closer!

If you were here at North two years ago, we hosted this conference for all district secondary schools and it was a huge success.  Now we are in the second year for the conference with all schools contributing. A lot of work has gone into making it even better than the last.  You will get to see YOUR colleagues present on things they are doing in their classrooms with students just like yours.  (Not somebody from somewhere else, with much different students and much different technology.)

The theme of the One Conference is "Level Up".  Presenters will be sharing how they have Leveled Up! in their use of technology. But what does it mean to "Level Up"?

Level-ing up comes from increasing the SAMR level of a task.  SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition.  SAMR is designed to show how teachers have infused technology into teaching and learning in their classrooms.   If you are using technology in your classroom, you are on a SAMR level, but often we are asked "how can I increase my level?" or level-up.  (It is important to know that throughout a lesson or unit you could be hitting different levels of SAMR.)


Go to this site to learn what it means to be on each level or search SAMR technology for more great resources.

The Waukesha ONE conference website is ready to be viewed here.  Make sure to look at this prior to heading to the conference on Friday.  You can build your schedule on the site so you remember where you decided to go and also have other options in case the session you choose is full.  Talk with your PLC teams and other colleagues to see what they are doing.  Divide and conquer.  Don't just go to a session because your friend is going.  Go to different sessions and share the knowledge with each other.