Common Core Critical Words List

This post's primary purpose is to make a pinnable link to a resource I found listing the 55 "critical words" that are listed in the common core appendix B.

Here's the fabulous picture that I've selected so that I can pin it. Ha.

teaching vocabulary

Hi readers. Just a forewarning: this is a bit of a brain dump about vocabulary instruction. I have been thinking a bit about vocabulary instruction, explicit and otherwise. The curriculum we have at school, while it has a decent word list, has really cheesy stories that are inauthentic, don't have a very familiar context for the kids we teach, and the vocabulary words are isolated within the context of vocabulary instruction. We have been puzzling over a more authentic way to teach vocabulary, mainly thinking about better read-alouds, and teaching fewer words that we (and students) can use throughout the day and can be incorporated into a variety of activities and disciplines.

Here's what I currently know about vocabulary and vocabulary instruction:

There's a huge gap in vocabulary before kids enter school based on their socio-economic status.

Most vocabulary (approximately 80%) is learned through someone providing an explanation of what a word means. So, merely reading a wide variety of texts will not automatically increase a child's vocabulary. They need someone (a parent, a teacher, a text) to provide an explanation of what a word means.

Schools aren't doing a very good job of teaching vocabulary, especially in primary grades.

In thinking about teaching vocabulary, it's helpful to think about three tiers of vocabulary. The first tier is everyday verbal vocabulary. The second tier is academic vocabulary, which is basically just words that appear more often in print than in speech but are fairly common words. (These two categories are obviously relative to the speaker.) The third tier is domain-specific language. This is specialized language used to describe very specific ideas in a particular discipline, such as addition, chrysalis, or viscosity.

One really important aspect of understanding word meanings is understanding word relationships. Synonyms, antonyms, shades of meaning such as the degree of strength a word indicates, are all really important aspects of understanding a word. Understanding how words are related through a root helps children be flexible with how they use and understand words.

Categorizing and grouping words by different commonalities is also really important in developing semantic maps of words. Some words describe parts of whole. Some words are related by a common theme, setting, or idea. Thinking about these relationships and organizing words helps build the semantic maps that are a part of truly understanding words. I haven't used concept maps much in my teaching, and when I have it's been mostly in science and math, but it seems like a really powerful (and in hindsight, obvious) tool for teaching vocabulary.

Here are a few resources I found for teaching vocabulary:

http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/spring2001/biemiller.cfm

http://www.berkeleyschools.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/BUSD_Academic_Vocabulary.pdf

Technology in Schools

I just watched a TED talk, shared on the 1 to1 schools blog, which was not earth-shattering news but nonetheless succinctly encapsulated my thoughts about technology in schools, which is that what's going on right now is woefully inadequate. I feel particularly passionate about underserved students using technology: I have visited schools with middle-class and wealthy students and seen the way they are able to use technology not only to gather information but also share what they know and express themselves. It doesn't seem like this savvy comes from their schools or teachers, but from outside of school. In my experience, there is a huge gap in technology use between poor and middle-class kids (the so-called digital divide). My first year of teaching (most of my students were low income, living on the west side of Chicago), I sent home a survey about how kids accessed the internet, and discovered that for most of the students who had internet access, they accessed it on a mobile phone. Most did not have a computer at home. This is an incredible gap in opportunity: being technologically illiterate is quickly becoming a very real form of illiteracy. Teachers need to stop being so afraid of technology.



The thing is, educators are generally aware that we need to incorporate technology in the classroom. The Common Core State Standards address technology (albeit in a vague and superficial way). And more and more classrooms are being equipped with interactive white boards and student computers (though usually just a few per classroom). The problem is, most educators (myself included) don't how to use the technology in a way that maximizes its benefit for students.

Technology should be a tool in students' hands. But in most cases it's simply window-dressing on old-school teaching. Interactive white boards are a great example. There are a lot of cool things you can do with them, but at the end of the day, they're not really a tool that students are using to create with. It's a specially-designed teaching tool that's essentially a really fancy white board. And most classroom computers are used for playing educational games, or accessing digital versions of textbooks. Again, this is simply a fancier version of something already happening in classrooms, and the technology is not being used by students to create something new, gather information, or express themselves.

Digital technologies are tools—tools that happen to be wildly powerful. They are rapidly reshaping our world. When we talk about using technology in schools, we shouldn't be thinking about how to make our teaching electronic. We should be thinking about enabling kids to use powerful tools to do things in ways they would not otherwise be able to.

Teachers need more training around authentic and purposeful use of technology in classrooms. People who understand philosophically how technology is changing and shaping our world need to help create vision of what technology use can look like in schools. I think this is where we have a disconnect. I am a woeful luddite (like many teachers I know). My awareness of this problem and the sense of urgency are largely shaped by the fact that I'm married to a computer scientist. Sean reflects often on the ways that technology allows him to be orders of magnitude more productive and creative; to have a voice and a larger audience than would ever be possible without it. We need to be thinking about how we can help our students do this in school and make it a part of their learning.

Summer Reading

Summer is winding down: one more week before I start setting up my (brand new!) classroom. This summer really flew. I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped (build a dining room table? read hundreds of picture books? not so much!) but I did do a lot of professional reading that has been really helpful. I really wish I'd read Small Group Reading Instruction, by Beverly Tyner, last year: I definitely could've used some of that insight into beginning and struggling readers with my third graders. She identifies five distinct stages of reading development and outlines in detail what readers at each stage need. I also really appreciate her clear-cut advice for guided reading instruction: she offers a very specific lesson format and scope and sequence for each stage of early reading. I'm sure I'll adapt it and make changes as needed, but I find it helpful to start from a framework rather than making it up from scratch (like I more or less have been to this point).

Right now I'm reading Growing Readers, by Kathy Collins. It's gotten me really excited about this year! Kathy Collins is part of the Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project, and I have used Lucy Calkins' units of study for reading both years I've taught and loved it. Kathy Collins definitely uses Calkins' approach to teaching reading, but Growing Readers is geared toward primary grades, which is so helpful to me in terms of building my knowledge of this grade band. It also has a lot more detail for how to make reading workshop work and lots of anecdotes about trouble-shooting typical difficulties. Something that surprised me is that guided reading is not the focus of reading workshop for her: conferring is. I have read about the importance of conferring, and I definitely confer with my students (I actually did it more than guided reading in my first year due to management issues and a dearth of guided reading resources) but it's never been the priority and the focus of my reading instruction. But I think if you understand what readers need and where they're at, it makes a lot of sense to prioritize conferring. Even when you have a guided reading group of students at a similar level, they are going to progress at different speeds and need different supports. I am excited to implement a reading workshop like she describes this year. Co-teaching will be a great opportunity to do a lot of conferring to be able to really differentiate on an individual level.

Google Art Project

I was browsing the teacher blogs I read today and came across a post about Google Teacher Academy (sounds like an amazing PD opportunity!). Among the cool stuff this teacher shared was Google Art Project. This is an amazing resource of tens of thousands of gigapixel images. And what's even more awesome is that you can search by just about any parameter you can think of: not only by collection, artist, and medium, but also by event, place, time, and person (artist or subject). This would be awesome for social studies and who knows what else!

Reading!

I have embarked on a reading project this summer. I want to read as many great picture books as I can so that I have a working knowledge of books that would be good for read-alouds. In the past I've either used chapter books or been frantically looking for books that would fit a particular strategy as I lesson-planned. I think that having a go-to list of books will be enormously helpful in planning more efficiently this year.

I found this great list of books by reading comprehension strategy over here at The Reading Lady. I am going to try and read most of these by the end of summer. I don't know all the books on the list but the ones I do know are high-quality so I am assuming the rest are as well. There are also great book lists at The Reading and Writing Project, broken down into different categories such as genre, multicultural literature, and good mentor texts. If you know of other sources for good read-aloud books let me know!

I am also reading Guided Math, by Laney Simmons. I have no idea where I picked this up or who (if anyone) recommended it, but it's been really interesting. Basically the author is taking the principles of balanced literacy and reading workshop and showing how you can apply them to math. It's also helpful that the examples she gives mostly come from primary classrooms, which is nice for me since I'm making a move to first grade in the fall.

I can't believe I start PD in one week! (Still have a dining room table to build—yes, it will happen. I am determined! The lighting fixture I also planned to build: probably not so much.)

Summertime

This summer is off to a great start! Turns out the key to getting a lot done is staying off the freaking computer. Yesterday I read You Can't Say You Can't Play, by Chicago Lab School teacher Vivian Paley. It's a pretty good (and fast) read. Basically it explores how kids exclude certain kids from play, and it's usually the same kids, and she creates a rule saying you can't say no. She also notices that kids very quickly create "bosses" for themselves, (either one kid makes him/herself the boss, or the other kids appoint someone the boss), and this boss is "in charge" of the excluding. Her rule (the title of the book) was effective in getting kids to include everyone in play but I found myself still wondering about the "boss" concept. Is this wired into our DNA somehow? One of the kids she talked to about this suggested it was a way of absolving the group of responsibility for decisions: if the "boss" said someone couldn't play, then it was only one kid not liking you, not all the kids. So interesting. Maybe I should do my own action research on this concept.

Once I finished the book (it's a quick read), I embarked on a deep-clean of the kitchen, which I am continuing today. After that I'll be starting on some web design I'm going to be working on this summer with Sean. Hopefully there will also be time somewhere for building a dining room table. I bought some old-growth 2x8s at Rebuilding Exchange, and I want to hire the guy who did some welding for our kitchen to build a base that looks something like this. I think the reclaimed wood and the dark steel base would look pretty cool. And then at some point, Sean and I want to take off to go to Estes Park for a couple weeks: busy busy!

Happy summer everyone!

mobility

One of the biggest challenges for me this year was the (extremely!) high mobility rate at my school. A couple people asked me for specific numbers and at the time I hadn't sat down and counted. Having just finished assembling our third grade yearbook, I had the chance to actually see how many students have come and gone from my class. Here's what a 39.5% mobility rate looks like:

Roster prior to the start of school: 30
First day attendance: 24 from roster
4 students transferred in within the first two weeks of school.
2 students left by the end of September.
1 more left in October.
2 students arrived in December.
3 students arrived in January.
1 student ARRIVED AND LEFT in April.
1 student LEFT THEN REENROLLED in April.
1 additional student left in April.
1 student left in May.
2 students left in June.

4 students neither started nor ended the year with us. In general, the students who transferred in mid-year had much poorer attendance than the rest of the class. They were sometimes absent whole weeks, or even multiple weeks at a time.

Total number of students transferring in (after the first two weeks of school, and not counting the same student transferring in twice): 6
Total number of students transferring out: 10

Next year I'm at a charter school. While I feel strongly about public education, as a teacher, I have to say I am looking forward to some stability in my classroom again. (My first year at Hope I had just one student transfer out: no other mobility).

Update: according to this page regarding how to calculate mobility rate, the actual mobility rate in my classroom was 47% (higher if you count the 4 students transferring in the first two weeks, which I haven't.)

8 Weeks of School Left

There are eight weeks of school left. This year was harder than my first year of teaching. That was definitely not something I was anticipating, but I was at a new school, with new students and new challenges. I feel like I learned a lot, and the experience has both helped me shape my priorities and also given me a lot to think about in terms of educational inequity and education reform. It's also been a crazy year outside of the classroom, what with the strike at the beginning of the year, and my school closing. This is definitely a time I will not forget.

As the year winds down (and/or gets crazier, but I won't depress you with the details), I've started reflecting on my teaching practice and progress, and my goals both personally and professionally. 

I have realized this year, more dramatically than last year, how important building relationships with students is. I am learning that through successes, failures, and tumult in this area, as well as the immortal spirit of my students' second grade teacher, who I feel like I know through my students. It's clear to me from the way my students reminisce and talk about her that she developed close, deep relationships with many, if not all of them. I have been hearing a lot about this since we heard about the school closing: every morning our principal begins announcements by saying, "Good Morning Fermi Family!" My kids take this assertion to heart. I can tell that it's important to them to feel like a part of a family at our school. And they definitely felt that with their second grade teacher. I have had multiple students tell me they felt like she treated them like one of her own kids. (I've had students tell me this as well. I've also had kids tell me they think I don't care at all.) The fact that they say these things shows just how important it is to my students that they feel loved and valued and cared for by their teacher. This reflection is why I'm realizing that I need to make time to talk to kids one on one, in a non-academic setting. Just to talk to them and listen to them. That's a big goal I have for the next eight weeks: make one on one time for all of my students.

I've also learned that there are goals outside of academics that need to be prioritized. And if I'm not at a level of expertise where I can accomplish multiple priorities, then I have to decide what's a top priority. This year I realized how important it is to maintain a calm environment. I realized this because of the reality that I can't always provide this to my students. But usually I can, and I strive to do that by any means necessary. It doesn't always involve the most student-centric teaching methods. But my students deserve a classroom that is a calm, safe place, and I will do everything in my power to give that to them.

I am also excited about finally having enough of a baseline of competence to be able to effectively use my summer to plan and prepare for next year. To some extent I was able to do that last year, but there was still a lot of pie-in-the-sky style planning that happened, and I was also just too consumed with renovating the house to be able to really dig in. This year I have a much better idea of what I'm going to do to be a better teacher next fall. I'm going to read every book listed in Fountas and Pinnell's Guiding Readers and Writers so that I've got a ready list of excellent books that can be used to teach various skills and strategies. I'm going to dig in to the Everyday Math curriculum, and also talk to other first grade teachers about what kids at that grade need to know, are ready to learn, and how they understand math. I want to read some books on teaching literacy that colleagues have recommended that I just haven't had time for.

On the personal side, I have learned that I need a hobby. I am still working on weekends, and I usually work between 60-70 hours a week. That's fine for now (provided I can lower my stress levels during the time I am in front of students) but I need to cultivate non-work interests. This year I still feel like I just work. I have started doing yoga twice a week which I imagine has had a positive impact on my stress levels. But there are so many things that I love and miss that I need to be doing. When you don't have a hobby, you end up thinking about work even when you're not actively working. That's not a break! I would like to join a choir again, or join a figure-drawing studio. Get back in touch with things that are both challenging and relaxing to me and also have nothing to do with my job. 

I am looking forward to ending this year on a high note and making year three the best year yet!

I Couldn't Make This Up

Today was a doozy of a day. The silver lining of it was that I didn't lose my patience. I just wanted to share for friends and family who don't always get a chance to to see the crazy shenanigans, here's a (thankfully unusual) day for your reading pleasure.

There were a couple issues in the morning: some of my usually well-behaved kids were having an off-day, and a girl who has some difficulty dealing with anger was having a particularly difficult time. But the morning actually went really smoothly. We had a great science lesson, the kids worked really well during math, and everyone was excited about Mr. Rich (our Ravinia teaching artist) coming in the afternoon. 

Then I picked the kids up from lunch. 

I arrive to find one student in tears that another student called him gay and reached under his shirt. So in the midst of dealing with this, I see three girls in line shoving and yelling at each other. So I send them to the office since we're right by there, and I've got other fish to fry. We go use the restroom which I try not to do straight after lunch because it's just a HUGE MESS of horribleness, but since Mr. Rich is here we need to do it now instead of after half an hour of reading. I'm already irritated on account of the girls and the bullying, and the kids being a mess in the hall is just too much. I tell them if they aren't good in the hall they won't go to Mr. Rich, so almost half the class is sitting in my room with their heads down instead of with Mr. Rich. Then the office pages me about the girls who I need to send write-ups down for, and since I have a volunteer in my room on Tuesdays I decide to the forms down to the office myself since my reliable students were all in a different room and at this point there's only two kids in the room (even so, probably a bad decision). When I come back she tells me that one of the girls (the one who is chronically disrespectful and disruptive) ran around the room and cussed at her, so then it was her turn to take her down to the office. I decide to hold a "girls meeting" for the girls who had been fighting, which was very productive, except that one of the girls told me she needed to use the bathroom and I told her to wait, and then she had an accident. So then I send her with her former brawlers/now-BFFs to go call home and get new pants. I clean up the mess which is thankfully not on the rug. Meanwhile, the class comes back. The student who had gotten bullied at lunch gets an early dismissal. Then the girls come back because the one with the accident couldn't get new pants brought to school in time. So I send her to the library with some books to read so she can dry off (I figured since no one but a few people saw, I'd save her the embarrassment of coming back with wet pants). Then she gets an early dismissal so I send one of the girls who already knew about the accident to go get her. All this time, mind you, I am trying to do a read-aloud. I decide that a better plan is to do some role-playing about being kind to others because it seems like we need it today, and my afternoon is pretty much shot anyhow. And then to end the day we read a little of Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, which at this point I'm wondering why I chose that book, because as much as the kids love it, I feel like I get to relive the most irritating parts of my day in book-form. 

Anyway. Yeah. 

The Bell

I did it. I bought a bell for my classroom. Fellow UTEPers, please don't shun me. Whenever I think about classroom management, and my struggles therein, I think back to the conversations we had in class, the thoughtful debates about the benefits and consequences of different types of control and the messages we send to our students, the difficulty many of us had (myself very much included) with authoritarian styles of classroom management. Well, here I am, a year and some months into my teaching career, and I am now the reluctant owner of a call bell.

As I mentioned, I was deeply conflicted about this. But here's my thinking. In order to teach, I need for my classroom function with a certain level of order. Ideally this responsibility is on the kids as much as possible; scaffolded of course. This is the cornerstone of a democratic classroom: exercising democracy. It's also important to help kids develop self-discipline, and you can't learn self-discipline unless you have the opportunity to practice self-discipline. As Bill and Amy love to say, you can't learn to make good decisions if you never make decisions. However, finding just the right level of teacher control is (for me, at least) remarkably difficult.

Don't get me wrong: I have purposefully incorporated a number of opportunities for kids to exercise decision-making and problem-solving skills. Part of why I have tried to implement Love and Logic is because it's based around structured decision-making (the idea is to give kids binary decisions, both of which are equally acceptable to you). I also have introduced Talk It Out to my students this year to help them with social-emotional learning and problem-solving. (They love it and it's some of the most active listening and thinking I see all day.) I try to mention regularly that students in my class are problem-solvers, they solve their own problems, etc. I am also trying to build more structured choice into my literacy block (more on that later: I'm still getting that figured out).

I think some people take more naturally than I do to a position of authority, so management was a disaster for me last year and continues to be a challenge. I am a gentle, passive person. And I see the ways in which school implicitly teaches kids their station: too often, rich kids are taught to lead, middle-class kids are taught to be workers, and poor kids are taught to follow directions. I have a desire to give kids as much power as possible to fight this pattern. But that is combined with a personal reluctance to take charge, which really killed me last year (I'm better now). What I'm saying is, some people are probably better managers than I am just on personality alone.

But the simple fact remains that I'm one person with 26 kids who, at various times of the day, need to be quiet so I can teach. I have to get their attention somehow. This year, I either say 3-2-1, or I clap three times. (I've heard conflicting advice on attention-getting signals: some people say be consistent, some people say mix it up. I suppose one is more about conditioning a response, and one is more about getting them interested in something novel. An interesting blend of these seemingly opposing strategies is the class-yes system from whole-brain teaching, which I might try next year or after winter break. But I digress.) Attention-getting is a necessary evil, and I'm sorry, but in one way or another, you're conditioning kids to respond a certain way to whatever it is you choose to do.

Here's where the bell comes in. I've noticed that sometimes kids assume that when I ask for their attention, I want them to clean up, when it might actually just be to point out a strategy I noticed a group using, remind them to use a quieter voice, or give a quick mid-workshop teaching point. It's really annoying to me when this happens: it's totally a personal problem, and has nothing to do with the kids. I really don't want to be annoyed at kids wanting to do the right thing as quickly as they can, and I want to be able to positively reinforce this behavior. So I decided that I am going to use the bell for specific signals, but not attention-getting. I think I will ring it once if the noise level is too loud (that way I can keep guided reading or whatever going with minimal interruption), and ring it three times to clean up (so that kids don't have to wait for me to give them directions). This way, I'll also need to get their attention less often, which will reinforce the idea that when I ask for their attention, it's for something important.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

1 to 1 Schools, More about Reader's Responses

Sean's been researching ideas for a new start-up project involving teachers, and he shared this great blog with me: 1 to 1 Schools. I've only just started reading, but it's got some good stuff. Just thought I'd share.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been thinking a lot about how to raise the quality of my students' reader's responses. I decided that in addition to the reader's response students do on their own, every Monday I'm going to give students a prompt and have them write about our shared reading. I decided to do this a) to give them ideas of what kinds of writing and thinking they could do with their own books, and b) increase the amount of writing they do about reading (and make sure they're practicing writing about high-quality texts and not—oh let's just hypothetically say—Spongebob). I recently scored my students' REACH assessments (it's a grade-level performance assessment where students read a passage and have to respond to it in written form). They didn't do very well, which speaks at least in part to their lack of experience explaining their thinking in writing. The Common Core State Standards put a lot of emphasis on interpretation, argumentation, and citation of texts, so I think beefing up my instruction around writing about reading will help my students do well in this area.

I am also struggling with how to implement centers-based literacy instruction. I keep going back and forth about which is going to run smoother/make it easier for me to run guided reading: timed rotations, or more of an options set up. I am leaning toward options, but I worry that the kids are used to centers and will think that this set up is too "free" and will not stay focused. I guess we'll see. It's also been hard to get things up and running because I'm so behind on my benchmark assessments, and I don't want to spend the time introducing each activity. So they've sort of been stuck on a few things (read with someone, journaling, write about reading, and only one word study activity) while I furiously STEP my kids. Hopefully I'll be done this week and can also get the rest of my literacy activities introduced and get into a rhythm with literacy.

Reader's Response Letters

I have been thinking of how to modify reader's response letters for a few students in my class. Last year I spent the whole year trying to get kids to write higher quality letters, and I think they just didn't really understand what I was looking for, even with the sample on a chart and in the front of their notebooks. This year, I also have students with IEPs in my room during reading, which is new for me. I made a simplified model letter with blanks and prompts for my students with IEPs, but in looking for some online I found another good one that I think I'll use for other students who are struggling. I discovered Ms. Sanchez' class, where Mariely Sanchez has a page devoted to literacy organizers. I am going to use the reader's response journal (for 3-5) in my class for some of my students.

Crying and Searching for Resources

Well, it's already happened this year: I cried in front of my kids on Friday. At the end of the day I had a student call another student a name (Scooby Doo, if you must know) and that student burst into tears. I also got a new student last Friday who has been the target of name-calling at recess, so this really put me over the edge. I started giving them the business about not being mean and how I don't like it when they call people names because I care about them, and it makes me sad when someone is mean to any one of my students, and I just started crying. I guess it was a rough week! I think I freaked them out a little by crying. I'm not against having feelings, but I really didn't plan on actually crying. Oh well. It is what it is, right?

Sean's working on a new business idea, this time aimed at teachers. So instead of planning today, I've been talking to him about planning. Ha. But the upside is that in the process, I've uncovered some resources I either forgot about, or hadn't known about. Here's a great one if you don't know about it already: Teaching with Primary Resources. If you've ever looked for primary resources online, you're probably picturing the murky, unsearchable dungeons of online collections of various libraries and government organizations, made out of early-90's internets and duct tape. But this is amazing! It's designed for teachers, organized by themes and topics of study, as well as grade level. Crazy!

60 hours a Week

That's the limit Sean set for me for work, and it's going pretty well! Granted, I at maybe 65 if we're being honest here, but I am getting a lot more done quickly and efficiently knowing I am not going to work past 7 at night and not work more than 5 hours on the weekend. I haven't got the weekend part down yet (that's where the over-spill happens) but I'm sticking to 7:00 pretty faithfully, and I have actually noticed that I'm more focused and productive (6:30 blog-posting not withstanding). I am actually excited and sort of, I don't know, determined to get stuff done, as opposed to feeling tired and defeated, which is how I felt last year when I did work at home. Of course, some of that is being a second-year teacher (yay for not being a first year teacher! I provided moral support only just today to a crying co-worker! But the truth is she's doing twice as good as I did last year). And also having a less hectic school day (I have an hour prep plus a 45-minute lunch every day, as opposed to last year's four 50-minute preps a week [at the end of the day: tough for my disorganized self!] and a 20-minute lunch, plus the day is about half an hour shorter). But I think some of it is just limiting my work time, and promising myself that I get to be a wife and a human every day, no matter what.

Personal Dictionaries

Last year I had a word wall in my room that I barely used at all. It was something that always got shoved down the priority list when I was running behind. So this summer I was thinking about how I could do a better job with my word wall this year. I decided that, instead of a word wall, I would give each student a personal dictionary where they could write down words they wanted to use in their writing but had trouble spelling. I like that a personal dictionary is also differentiated, since not all kids are going to be in the same place in terms of what sight words they can or can't spell. Well, turns out I have to have a word wall in my room, so I figure the personal dictionary can be in addition to it, not instead of. I think that'll actually work out really well, because then we can still do activities and word work around the word wall words to help kids remember them, and then the act of writing them in the dictionaries will help them remember them as well. And then they can add other words they need help spelling, on an individual basis. I'm excited to try it out! I didn't get around to creating the dictionary this summer, but I, uh, have some time on my hands right now, so I made it the other day! And because I am a nerd, I even looked up the frequency of letters appearing at the beginning of words, so there should be plenty of room in each section for whatever words students put in there all year. Here's a link to the pdf it if you want to use it. The pages are in order for copying back to back then folding in half. (The first blank half page I didn't know how to get rid of, but you don't need it. Copy pages 2-9, with 2-3 back to back, 4-5 back to back, etc).

Why I'm Striking

Apparently there's a tentative contract! (update: or maybe not? My union rep tells me that they didn't have a contract to look at during their meeting but they'll meet again Sunday if a deal's reached Saturday.) The Chicago Tribune is swamped and I can't get on to see it, but as of last night, the proposed evaluation plan I saw sounds workable. (My teacher eval post is still in the works! I promise it's coming.) I explained a little bit why it's problematic to use standardized tests for more of the evaluation, but a fellow teacher recently made the point that the silver lining to this is that less of a teacher's evaluation comes from subjective sources like the principal's observation. I think that's a really good point. They are apparently going to use a combination of ISAT (and then presumably PAARC, beginning next year) and NWEA value-added scores. I am still not sure what that means for me as a third-grade teacher though. They also say teachers will be compared against other teachers with a similar demographic of students, which is good too. Also good is that first-year teachers can't be fired for an "unsatisfactory" rating (I can assure you that 90% of first-year teachers are unsatisfactory). 

I have been moved and humbled by the level of passion and urgency of people on all sides of this strike. I realized that I have at times been both too cynical (assuming that there's no money for things teachers are asking for, that their demands are pie-in-the-sky, that some of these changes are inevitable), and not cynical enough (about motives of the city or the motives of the union). I know this may sound crazy to many who are following this closely and care deeply about the issues in play, but I think I was being overly pragmatic. I have deeply appreciated the thoughts and opinions of numerous people weighing in about why they're striking, why they oppose the strike, what their hopes for the future of education are. I am humbled by their passion: I have to confess that I did not have such loftly ideals in mind at the beginning of this. I've come to realize, though, that people on both sides see this as a fight for the future of public education. I am now more supportive of the strike than I was initially, because I realize that this is an opportunity for the challenges of urban education to be visible to people in a way that they usually are not.

I believe firmly that small schools like the one I work in are not inefficient, but in fact essential in high-poverty communities. We need far more mental health services than we have. We need smaller class sizes, better nutrition programs, more enrichment, better facilities...the list goes on. And I sadly know that very little of what I see as essential is going to come to fruition, strike or not. But I feel that, if people want to talk about education reform and implement policies in the name of education reform, it is on some level disingenuous to claim to want those things, and not be willing to do what is essential to that task. Are we serious about changing education? Great! Let's do it. 

If we're serious, then let's be real: forget equality of funding. Students in high-poverty schools need MORE resources than their advantaged peers. Let's overhaul how (and how much) we fund our schools. Instead of suburban schools spending twice as much per student on education, how about we spend twice as much per student in our struggling schools? Let's spend money where it's needed. Let's spend it on the kids who still don't have internet access at home in 2012. The ones who sneak food from the cafeteria so they have something to eat at home. The ones whose parents smell like alcohol when the drop them off in the morning. The ones who scream obscenities and react like a frightened animal when people try to get close. 

Let's overhaul teacher induction: new teachers should get an apprenticeship with a master teacher in order to refine their practice while being held to a high standard, and minimizing the potential negative impact of new teachers on kids. And yes, let's dismiss teachers who aren't interested in improving their practice.

I didn't vote for this strike, but now that we're in it, I find that the reason I am striking is so that people have to think about how much of a priority public education is. If you work in education and you are against this strike, I have the utmost respect for that. If you don't work in education or in low-income communities, I invite you to come visit my school, anytime. We're at 1415 E. 70th Street in Chicago. This is not an abstract problem, and it deserves your full attention and consideration. I work with 27 brilliant, resilient, amazing people everyday who deserve the same opportunities you and I had, and more.

Update: I forgot to include my favorite revolutionary school reform soap-box: abolishing private schools! Here's an interesting article on Norwegian schools if you haven't already run across it yet.

The Strike

I've been wanting to write a post about the strike, my thoughts on it, and what it means for my school and my situation, but I've been reluctant to stick my neck out there because there are a lot of strong feelings on all sides of this thing.

Here's a good summary of what's going on with the strike.

On the strike, my feelings are mixed. This has been brewing since long before I got hired in CPS, and I think I may feel differently than a lot of teachers do as a result.

The raise issue: last year I taught at a contract school (essentially a charter, and non-union), so moving to CPS was a 20% pay increase for me. I think CPS teacher pay is pretty fair. And I certainly understand the role that the union plays in getting it to that point, but at this time, I don't think that the raise CTU was asking for was reasonable (I use past tense because I think at this point the money issues have been sorted out). I also tend to be a bit fiscally conservative, and I know there's really not any money to be had, and the Board's credit rating has actually been downgraded recently. So I think teachers need to take one for the team this time and lay off the pay increase issue. Plus I think we look like jerks asking for a pay increase when there's still such high unemployment. And it is really hard for me to feel okay picketing in a community that quite likely has over 25% unemployment. On the other hand, I can see how teachers who worked under the previous contract probably don't feel it's fair that Emanuel rescinded the raise that was in their contract. But the thing is, teachers get step increases every year for each year of experience, and the 4% we were asking for was on top of the step increase. So it was actually something like a 5-6% raise effectively, which is a rather handsom raise to most people.

The big issues still holding things up are teacher evaluation and school closings. I completely and totally agree that teachers should be held accountable for student achievement. The tricky part comes in measuring that. The main issue holding up negotiations right now is that they want to use state standardized tests for this, which are problematic for a few reasons:

1) They're horrible measures of student progress, for students, parents, teachers, and teacher evaluators.

2) They are a narrow assessment of the teaching I do and the goals I have for my students (though the PARCC test, aligned to the Common Core Standards, seems somewhat more promising than the ISAT on this front, but still will not test all areas of student learning).

3) It totally sucks to depend on one week of a pressure-cooker test that students could do poorly on for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with me.

4) A teacher could quite conceivably show varying levels of student growth from year to year and still be a good teacher with the same level of quality and expertise from one year to the next, and that is not being taken into account. I only got to see percentile data from last year's ISAT for my students, but I moved my students an average of 13 percentile points higher from third to fourth grade in math last year. I can assure you that, as a first-year teacher, I did not perform some kind of miracle with my students last year. I am a much better teacher now, but I think the odds of me making a gain like that this year are really slim. Plus, there's the complication of teaching third grade this year: how exactly will they measure the progress I've made with my students? Third grade is the first year they do state testing. The progress I can make also depends what the students' education has looked like up to the point they enter my room. Consistently high-quality teaching is likely to make my job at any grade easier. (FULL DISCLOSURE ON THIS ITEM: I have no idea if Emanuel's proposal calls for student performance to be measured as value-added as I've described above, or a percent meets/exceeds. If it's just a flat percentage of students who meet or exceed, then I'm totally hosed. This year's No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress for percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards is 92.5%. Last year my school's meet/exceeds average was close to 50%. That represents gains in meets/exceeds for every single grade who took the ISAT, by the way. No small feat, but still failing miserably by NCLB milestones, and still heart-breaking as a teacher to see what that actually means in terms of student achievement.

5) Focusing on one test for evaluation means that teachers will focus more on the test with what they teach (read p. 28 in the link) which means your teaching is only as good as the test you use. This means two things: a) that teachers in struggling schools where students are below the target meets/exceeds goal spend time on test prep, which is something that I know as a kid I never experienced going to suburban schools, and b) teachers spend less time on subject areas that are not tested. So reading and math start to crowd out social studies and science. The recent alarm over science time in schools is actually a result of science not being a tested subject for most grades (only 4th and 7th). The other grades spent relatively little time on science because it wasn't tested at their grade, and science education suffered as a result. I guess the answer might be to test science every year, but then what about social studies? Or writing? And I spend a good deal of time helping my kids learn about getting along with each other, managing their emotions and reactions, navigating conflicts and misunderstandings, making going decisions—social-emotional learning. I do this because it's important, and because I frankly couldn't keep my classroom calm and safe without it. But this isn't tested. Should I get rid of that?

6) Particularly in schools with a high mobility rate, standardized testing sometimes is measuring student progress of students who haven't spent much time in front of that teacher. When I was a teaching intern, we had a girl transfer in two weeks before the ISAT. Should her scores be a part of my mentor teacher's evaluation?

The thing is though, if Emanuel is in good faith trying to gradually implement an evaluation plan that he's willing to tweak (on an ongoing basis) to fix its inevitable shortcomings (and include teachers in the formulation of the evaluation system), I'm personally okay with that. This is one thing I wish the union were a little more flexible on:  I think people would be much more sympathetic if we adopted some kind of performance-based evaluation and then later protested unfair outcomes or implementation of it. 

In terms of the other part of teacher evaluation—observing instruction—CPS has just switched from the infamous "checklist" system of observation-based teacher evaluation to one based on the Charlotte Danielson Framework for teaching, which is a wonderful tool for assessing teaching. I think I'm actually going to write a separate post on my thoughts about teacher evaluation and what I think it should look like, and I'll talk more about the Danielson Framework in that post.

The other big issue for me (and the other big issue still not resolved in talks) is closing schools. My school would more than likely get closed under the proposed plan. First of all, it's really small (one teacher per grade level) which makes it a target for consolidation. But I feel very strongly that the size of the school is really important for our students. Many of our students have really unstable home lives, for any number of reasons. We also have an extremely high mobility rate: we get new kids, kids leave, and some kids who were there and left, come back mid-year. It's chaotic and stressful. But I believe that having a small school is a hedge against the chaos of high mobility and difficult home situations. The teachers who have been at the school for a couple years know all the students by name. The kids know all the teachers. It's a very close-knit community, and feels like a family. My personal feeling is that larger schools can't provide this same level of stability and security for students who are in inherently unstable situations, and I think it's wrong to close schools just because they're small. I think the opposite, in fact. We should have more small schools. I know it costs more, but at some point we have to ask ourselves whether we're willing to accept the cost of what it takes to give kids what they need.

In addition to being small, we're on probation due to extremely low scores (though they've been going up: my principal has been at this school for five years and I think it could be demonstrated that she and the staff she's put together are making progress. But that's not something that's necessarily considered.) So I would likely get laid off, and then I would not have recall rights, which it seems would suit Emanuel just fine because by his logic I am a bad teacher from the bad school he just closed. 

Teachers are also asking for smaller class sizes, air conditioning (yes, sad), more support services like counselors, social workers, and nurses (badly needed), and to stop expansion of charter schools. I know a lot of those services are not going to happen because the money's not there. But the same thing applies there as with the small schools: are we willing to actually pay for things that will help students who struggle the most?

At the end of the day, my feeling about the strike is that I want it to end, and I don't care how it ends. There are things I think the union is asking for that are unreasonable and not in students' best interests, but I also feel strongly that some things Emanuel wants to put in place are perhaps well-intentioned or pragmatic, but ultimately not good for students. I support the strike because I think Emanuel is trying to bust unions, and I believe we have the right to collectively bargain. But I would be okay if the strike ended now and the board got to implement everything they're currently asking for.

To be honest, I just want to get back to teaching. I love my students, and I love my job. I'm a good teacher and I'll only get better each year. I want to be respected for what I do, and I want to be supported in my growth and improvement.

Spock Power

This is what Sean has named Love and Logic. Ladies and gents, I am really exercising my Spock Power these days. I Love and Logicked one of my students yesterday/today: he didn't stay to talk to me about a minor incident yesterday, so I left a note on his desk that said, "I need to talk to you about something pretty serious. We can talk at recess. Don't worry about it til then." It absolutely had the intended effect. So, so sweet.

Then today, I had another student give me the opportunity to Love and Logic her (yes, it's a verb. Deal with it.) I say opportunity, and I mean it. So fun! The Teaching with Love and Logic book says that you might start looking forward to opportunities to give kids choices, delay consequences, make them solve their own problems, etc, but I have to admit I was doubtful. But guess what? It is so, so fun once you start to get the hang of it.

Today a girl in my class was talking and laughing during independent work time, and I asked her to move to the time out area (I call it the Cool Down Area). She threw a fit, talked back, and refused to move, so I told her it was too bad she was choosing to make this worse, but I assured her we could talk about it at recess. She never did move to the Cool Down Area, but she was completely silent the rest of the time, and kept trying to show me how much work she was doing whenever I walked near her desk. I just ignored her. At recess I had her come to the room (which I think surprised her for some reason), and she told me that she hated this school. I had her write a behavior reflection, and then I asked her to read it to me. (the reading it aloud bit is a pro tip from lovely coach Kate: thanks Kate!) This proved to be challenging for her since she was still in avoidance mode. I told her if she wasn't ready to talk about it, there was still some more time left in recess, and she could sit at her desk til she was ready. So I just worked at my desk and didn't really care when she was ready: genuinely. In the past I've pretended to have stuff to do while I secretly am waiting for a kid to come talk to me. It's so freeing to really just not care when they're ready! A couple minutes later she was ready, but we didn't finish discussing the problem because we ran out of time, so I told her that unfortunately we'd have to continue our conversation after school, or maybe during recess tomorrow. I can't wait!

As a side-note, part of the entertainment of Love and Logic is when kids get suspicious of the system. They're so used to being dressed down. She really didn't know what to do with me. At one point she told me, "This is kind of weird." And the awesome thing is, we had a productive conversation once she decided she was ready.

Yay for Spock Power!

Procedures Quiz

So, you know how you're supposed to think about outcomes and what you'll be assessing first, and then plan how you'll teach it (at least if you're approaching planning with a backwards design framework)? Well, I have just had an epiphany about teaching procedures to my kids. My first week plans borrow heavily from the awesomely talented Ms. Kelly at Brownell Elementary, and one of the things she does is a test over her classroom procedures. I didn't do this last year, but I just finished making one for this year, and as a person who struggled mightily with management and procedures in my first year of teaching, let me tell you, this quiz was more for me than it will be for my students. It really helped me to nail down what each procedure would be when I had to put it in quiz form. (This probably sounds more obvious to the more naturally-organized among you, but I really sucked at this last year. I had a hard time caring about how kids sharpen pencils or get tissues. But these stupid, stupid things about killed me last year, directly and indirectly.) So anyway, I highly suggest making a procedures quiz to help you think through what you need your kids to know about working in your classroom.

Oh, and I have a Love and Logic post brewing, I think. I hope. Today there was an incident that is currently be Loved and Logicked. I'll let you know how things shake out.