by Karen Klotzbach - Facilitator of Mentoring & Induction and Elementary MTSS Reading aloud to my students was always my favorite part of our daily routine. I like to think it was also my students’ favorite part of the day. When I pulled out our latest book, everyone gathered in silence on the carpet, ready to begin the next adventure with the characters! Throughout the year, our read-alouds brought us closer as a class. We laughed together and sometimes we even cried together. (Reading How to Steal a Dog as a class was an experience like no other!) The time I spent with my class during read-alouds fostered a strong sense of community along with modeling my own love of reading while sharing various genres with my students. Reading aloud to my students was the #1 way that I encouraged my students to read!
Children love to be read to. Whether it is on the laps of their parents or on a rug listening to their teacher, it is a special time when they can listen and enjoy literature that they may not be able to access independently. In this day and age of shortened class periods and little wiggle room, it can be difficult finding time to share books. But it is worth it! Read-alouds are usually an integral part of the day for elementary school students, but the practice wanes as students enter the intermediate and middle grades. However, this is also the time when students begin to set aside books for video games, computer time, sports, and various social activities. While these are also important parts of growing up, modeling our own love of reading can foster the joy of reading in our middle school students. So how can teachers make time for read-alouds? 1) Establish a regular routine– Share a read-aloud each day at the end of your reading or writing workshop or the end of your class for five minutes. Students know that read-aloud will happen each day and they know it will be your wrap-up. It will be something many of your students look forward to! 2) Choose books that you enjoy- This is so important! Your students will be able to tell immediately if you aren’t enjoying the time you spend reading aloud. And if you aren’t enjoying it, neither will they. Share classics that you enjoyed as a child, or new favorites! What you read isn’t nearly as important as the enthusiasm you share with your class. Your passion will be contagious! When you are passionate about the book you're reading together, making time to share it will come naturally. It won’t seem like a chore, and your students will be begging you to read more. 3) Make connections to your read-aloud throughout the day and the course of the year– In my classroom, we had a bulletin board where we hung up copies of the covers of books we read as a class. Throughout the year, we would refer to our past read-alouds whenever possible. I tried to read a variety of genres, so that the students could draw on these books during various units throughout the year. It was a great way for the kids to come together and have a common shared knowledge and the opportunity to make connections between texts, the world around them, and their own personal experiences! 4) Read aloud books that connect with various parts of curriculum– In middle and high school, teachers are experts in their subject area. Because of this, we sometimes forget about the other content areas. A class read-aloud can be an opportunity to bring language arts into the content areas. Science teachers can read novels with scientific or environmental themes. Social studies and history teachers can choose from an abundance of historical fiction! In talking with another co-worker, they remember their college professor reading various picture books (such as books written by Patricia Polacco) at the end of each week. No one is too old to be read to! These are just a few of the ways that I made time for reading aloud in my classroom. Reading aloud with my students was honestly our favorite part of the day. I hope that you are able to take a few minutes each day to incorporate read-alouds into your classroom routine, sharing your own love of reading with your students and fostering a strong sense of community.
2 Comments
By Sarah Elsbernd, Special Needs Facilitator One of the most powerful and impactful training I have ever been to was the summer autism training provided through Keystone AEA. While doing that training, there were four questions that guided everything we learned about working with students who have autism. Something clicked for me when I learned about these four questions, and I wondered where this classroom management guidance had been all my teaching career?! Whether you work with students who have autism or not, these questions are great for any student. So what are they?
If you are struggling with a student who does not know what to do, ask yourself, “Does the student know the answer to these four questions?” When students know before they start a task, they are likely to be more independent and behaviors will be minimized.
I had these questions posted on a paper beside my clock in my classroom. I reviewed them often and reflected on them when I had a behavior situation that did not go the way I wanted it. Did the student know all the answers to those questions before I asked them to do something? Did they know the answers before I expected them to do something without asking? If not, I couldn’t expect the student to follow through with a task perfectly. These questions can be applied to most any situation. Every day routines should also have these questions answered for students. Whether it is a paper/pencil task or going to lunch, you might consider breaking down the overall task into specific, smaller tasks. Even when I would think I had the questions answered, the answers might not have been clear enough for the students. I then needed to refine my answers by providing visuals or written explanations. As I reflect on these questions as an adult, I have realized that we look to have these questions answered for our own work. These questions changed my teaching, and I thought about them for each lesson that I planned and for each routine and task I expected out of my students. I hope that they can be as impactful for you and your students as they have been for me! By Liz Fox, Collaborative Teacher We all know that feeling in August (July?) when school supplies sections pop up everywhere, reminding us that another academic year is impending. This year felt different. What will this school year be like? How do I navigate these feelings of being overwhelmed and unprepared after the challenges we faced during the pandemic? As I wrestled with these questions, we received a letter from Mr. Lane welcoming us back to the 21-22 school year. He included a story by Stephen Covey about a man trying to saw down a tree. When this man was asked if he should sharpen his saw, he replied that he was too busy sawing to do so. Mr. Lane not only hoped we had “sharpened our saw” over the summer but also encouraged us to do so as the new school year began.
Two months later, one of my favorite bloggers, Dave Stuart, wrote about the concept of satisficing. He explains and gives credit to this strange word in this way: “It's Nobel winner Herbert Simon's. It means, ‘Doing something at the good-enough level, not the optimal level.’ Few skills are as critical to the well-lived teacher's life.” This stopped me dead in my tracks. I take pride in the amount of time, effort, and attention to detail I spend as a teacher. I, like so many of you, stay after school for many hours beyond our contract day, and then I go home and work some more. But I have noticed that sometimes my input doesn’t lead to the results I expect from my students. Enter satisficing. It was time for me to realize that just because my evenings and weekends are relatively free, spending hours and hours on planning, assessing, and more planning wasn’t necessarily productive for me or for my students. The concept of satisficing–albeit more authentic in theory than practice–was beginning to help me lead a more balanced life. I often agonize over lesson plans, making small adjustments and wholesale changes in hopes to meet student needs (and, unfortunately, frustrating those with whom I work). Satisficing has allowed me to–as hard as it is–let go of ruminating over every decision I make. I’m not perfect by any means, but learning how to “sharpen my saw” has led to more clarity and efficiency. Another blogpost by the same author reinforced my ideas. Doing a better job analyzing my inputs and outputs has allowed me to take stock of the times I was using and/or creating lessons that weren’t as helpful as I first thought they might be. Teaching has been quite a challenging journey this year, making the successes in and out of the classroom feel more precious than ever. I’m guessing I’m not alone in realizing feelings of burnout were creeping into my psyche. Reading a post entitled “Mechanics of Teacher Burnout” helped me get back on track. I have tried to take this advice: “The first priority, in my view, is depressurizing the self. This one's the most within my control and is the easiest to modify, and it enables me to do the harder work of workload simplification. The second priority, then, is making my workload behave—workload simplification, so that I can focus on what matters most.” Sounds like a good way to sharpen my saw. What should we do with these sticky notes? Is it getting worse? What does worse mean, anyway?3/3/2022 By Taylor Amundson, DMS 6th ELA, and Carole Sand, DMS TAG & Collaborative Teacher What should we do with these sticky notes? Is it getting worse? What does worse mean, anyway? Sometimes the best ideas happen “in the moment.” These occur in our classrooms every day when students ask questions, share ideas, or toss out random comments. As teachers, it’s tricky to figure out when we should capitalize on these teachable moments and when we need to stay the course. In Mrs. Amundson’s 6th grade ELP reading class recently, the decision to take advantage of teachable moments paid off by spurring active learning and higher student engagement. After learning about personification, idioms, metaphors, and other figurative language, Amundson’s first hour students read a short story and applied their learning by working with a partner to use Post-it notes to record examples. After sharing their findings, a student asked a simple question – “What should we do with these sticky notes?” In the moment, the teachers suggested: “Stick them on the cabinets.” Second hour students immediately noticed and were curious about the sticky notes and became very motivated to find as many, or more, examples than the previous class. You can bet that they and students throughout the day were highly engaged when they read the story to see how many examples of figurative language they could find. The photo tells you the rest of the story. On a different day, after reading several stories and poems about natural disasters, a student asked, “Are natural disasters getting worse?” This prompted a discussion of different types of natural disasters. As the discussion progressed, another important question surfaced – “What does ‘worse’ mean with a natural disaster?” More frequent? More intense? More deadly?
We decided to search for our answers. Students broke into groups, chose a natural disaster, and looked for answers. They were very excited about their learning and wanted to share their work. This led to lessons on credible sources, paraphrasing, interpreting graphs, and understanding cause/effect. The final results were large posters, oral presentations, and excitement by all of the 6th grade classes. In the end, we learned that the meaning of ‘worse’ differs with each type of natural disaster but we did find they all had one main cause in common: global climate change. It’s hard to know when to take the plunge into teachable moments, but in these two cases we were glad that we did. By Molly Holkesvik, DHS ELA Teacher & Collaborative Teacher The weather is cold. Our schedules are crazy busy. Our mental and emotional status changes every five minutes, depending on who is around and the subject of conversation. We know working out would keep us in better physical, mental, and emotional health; however, finding the time to work out proves a major obstacle. That’s why I decided to share with you some tips to working out at school without even knowing it.
I bet many of you have even more ideas. Please share them with me, and I can continue to update this post. Remember, anything we can do for ourselves to keep us mentally, physically, and emotionally strong is worth our time and energy. By Kourtnie Hunter, 6th ELA & DMS Collaborative Teacher Okay, we’ve all been there. Maybe some of us are there now, or maybe you are fast approaching. Perhaps, you’ve even been there a while, but I can’t imagine you’ve never been there. Where exactly am I talking about? I am talking about the dreaded teacher burnout *insert gasps of horror*. But what does teacher burnout even mean? Teacher burnout means, according to Psychology Today, "a state of chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, detachment, and feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment." Does this sound or feel familiar? If so, you may be feeling burnt out from teaching.
Because teachers are held to high standards, it can be easy for us to fall into a state of constant work, work, work as we strive for perfection. This includes us constantly learning new teaching methods, classroom management strategies, and acquiring new skills and tools for effective teaching, and not to mention, analyzing data. As defined by Fiona Tap, a teacher-researcher for Western Governors University, burnout can manifest itself in many ways, like losing sleep, feeling overwhelming stress, trouble concentrating, eating issues (too much or too little), and can even affect mental health, leading potentially to depression or anxiety. Because we are in a constant state of giving, as we give ourselves to our students and careers, we oftentimes forget to stop and give to ourselves. Building a balance between school life and outside of school life is key to avoiding or recovering from burnout, so I want to leave you with some suggestions on what you can do if you are facing burnout. First and foremost, make time for yourself and do things you enjoy doing. Go for a run, write poetry, play fetch with your dog, take a nap! Make sure to prioritize your health by exercising and eating well, and take time each day to give yourself positive affirmations, such as “I was proud of myself today when…” or “Today was a good day because…” Learn when to say no when you’re already busy with things, and give yourself time to relax (and maybe avoid social media for a day or two). Take a step back from doing homework and grading on the weekends; I promise, you will learn to cope with the immediate guilt and stress you feel when not doing work on the weekends, but you will learn to be okay with it! Set boundaries with yourself and others to establish expectations and procedures for yourself to follow. For example, “I will not stay past 3:30 on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.” Plan a one-day lesson you teach simply because you love to teach it! These are just some ideas for ways that you can take care of your well-being. As a final thought, we are approaching Thanksgiving quickly, and I want us to think about being grateful for ourselves and all that we do for our school, colleagues, and students. You are valued at Decorah Community School District. You are loved. YOU ARE ENOUGH. By Kourtnie Hunter, DMS ELA & Collaborative Teacher I had the recent pleasure to listen to a conversation between students and a colleague about what makes a safe space for LGBTQ+ students. They discussed how a particular space in a school can hold power enough to help students who identify as part of this community feel at ease and safe. I began to wonder if my own classroom had that same feeling. Was my classroom a safe space? I began to consider what I could do to make sure my classroom was deemed a safe space for my students. The most obvious, as the students shared (yet one I had not done), was to post the safe space triangle graphic in or outside of my room. This was an evident, clear way to show students your support and the safety guaranteed right as they enter the classroom. As I kept thinking, I came up with other ways to make my classroom more LGBTQ+ friendly.
By Kourtnie Hunter, DMS ELA & Collaborative Teacher I recently learned something about myself that completely explained part of my personality. I have always struggled with listening, no matter who or what was being talked about, no matter how important the conversation, I’ve been someone who cannot listen.
As I went through school, I was complimented often on my ability to achieve academically, but behind the mask, I was always the student who heard directions and then went, "uh, what?!" when it was time to work. I couldn’t recall what had just been told to me. As I got older, the problem seemed to escalate, and I found myself struggling to listen to anyone or anything at all-- I began to lose my ability to interact with others in meaningful ways, and I found I couldn’t even listen to my favorite TV shows anymore. My frustration with myself grew to the point that I felt I was broken somehow. What was wrong with me? During meetings, I struggled to follow along and work with others, and I found myself often leaving a place thinking what just happened? What did I miss? One day I was on Tik Tok, and I noticed several videos with closed captions on, and for the first time, I HEARD what the silly videos were telling me. My ears had suddenly turned on! They were hearing and listening for the first time in years, which was weird because captions are read, not heard, but that’s what made the entire difference for me. Closed captions. I had another ah-ha moment at a meeting at the beginning of the school year where we had to read off example situations from classrooms to complete an activity. I led my group through reading the situations out loud (typically I am passive about reading aloud to others), and again, I could HEAR what they were saying even though the words were silently printed on a piece of paper. I found the activity enjoyable and easy to comprehend. So, how does this all connect to me in my classroom? I am a visual learner, and I realized I could increase my auditory learning skills by pairing them with my visual learning strengths. Once I had two senses working together, my world opened up! I realized I could do the same for students in my classroom, so I wanted to offer some tips on bringing together auditory and visual learning skills:
By Dana Bockman, Facilitator of Instruction and Assessment I have always loved the phrase "knowledge is power". As we become more knowledgeable, we develop our beliefs, opinions, awareness, and understanding. And this provides us with power to act in ways that reflect our growing understanding of ourselves and others. As I write this blog post and think back over our time on April 23, as well as consider the two blog posts that followed (Equity in Education: What it Is and Why it Matters; A Snapshot of Educational Inequities in America), I feel like that is the path we are on as a district. We want to increase knowledge so our staff has a deeper understanding and awareness. We are not about forcing beliefs and opinions, but rather we want to present the facts. We want to increase the collective knowledge of our staff. Often times, reviewing data sets the stage for a deeper understanding and for further analysis and discussion. It certainly increases awareness! My intention today is to again share data and to increase our awareness as a district. The Trevor Project has just released the 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health. According to The Trevor Project, "This survey sheds light on the many unique challenges faced by LGBTQ young people by capturing the experiences of nearly 35,000 LGBTQ youth from across the country. We are proud that this sample is our most diverse yet, with 45% being LGBTQ youth of color and 38% being transgender or nonbinary." I hope you will take a moment to review the results of this survey.
Does this Ring a Bell? A Professional Growth Model & Danielson Instructional Framework Refresher5/13/2021 By Dana Bockman, Facilitator of Instruction and Assessment On two late start Wednesdays in May of 2019, staff was introduced to the Professional Growth Model (PGM) which the District would be implementing over the coming years. Around this same time, the Iowa Department of Education was beginning to encourage districts to utilize an instructional framework, introducing the Iowa Instructional Framework as an option for districts. Lucky for us, a PGM revolves around the use of an instructional framework and we were already beginning to implement components of the Danielson Framework to support our shift to a growth model. We were ahead of the game! If you are interested in learning more about the steps Decorah Schools has already taken in the implementation of a Professional Growth Model you can read more here.
Due to the school closure last year, we have not been able to implement the PGM fully nor have we been able to increase understanding of the Danielson Framework and how it is utilized for self-reflection, goal setting, and teacher/administrator conversations. We are now ready to begin moving forward with the next steps in the implementation of the Framework and the PGM. Next week, we will have a chance to take a look at the Danielson Framework to gain an understanding of the four Domains and their Components. Next fall, we will examine the four Levels of Proficiency (LOP) utilized within the instructional framework rubrics before teachers complete their first self-assessment. Want to get a headstart? You can read more about the Danielson Framework in this article from ASCD and review the Danielson Framework rubrics by selecting the links below.
|
AuthorsDCSD Teachers, Instructional Coaches, Learner Advocate, and Collaborative Teachers Archives
November 2022
Categories |