I think about Sternberg's Three Intelligences a lot in plaaning my lessons to try to reach a variety of "thinkers". Sometimes its a challenge to try to get analytical thinkers to feel comfortable with developing their creative thinking while trying to get creative thinkers to be a bit more practical. I try to build my lessons so they have a portion that is "formula based" for students who need that sequence but also open ended enough to allow students to solve the problem in a different way. I'd like to help students tap into all the styles of thinking so they can be more flexible in solving problems in the future.
Did you know that the Great Seal is like America's birth mark? Did you know that Articles of Confederation is like building a house out of sand rather than bricks. Did you know that a federal system of government was like yin and yang symbol. Did you know that the Bill of Rights is like a flying bald eagle.
These are some of the amazing things my students have come up with here recently in some activities we've been doing. The first simile came from a Socratic seminar I did with my GT kids during our study on the US Constitution. The discussion that came about was absolutely amazing and eye opening. It's hard to believe that 6th graders can come up with this type of stuff.
The next ones came from a review activity I did using the Frayer Model. I split my kids up into 6 groups. Each group was assigned a major topic of our unit: Federal System, Bill of Rights, The Great Compromise, The US Constitution, etc. Each group had to 1. Define the term 2. Come up Accomplishments 3. Explain why it's important 4. Explain what it's like.
My kids wowed me, especially with the similes they came up with. Not many adult Americans can define what a federal system of government is. I even asked my husband who is a walking dictionary to tell me what it is and he couldn't do it. So, for 6th graders to understand it enough to come up with similes knocked me off my feat. After learning about the Frayer Model, I used it immediately and thought it was an extremely powerful activity. The kids really got to thinking, even my non-GT classes. It really pushed these kids to the next level. I have been under-estimating a couple of my classes all year and this just proved that all kids can think.
Now, I'm in the middle of a WebQuest on Westward Expansion. Wish me luck!
I have Westward Expansion materials. All based on Bloom's. Can be used for anchor activities, interactive bulletin board/learning center or to populate fields on a Tic/Tac/Toe, choice board or menu. Still working on the unit? Let me know and I will bring it on Thursday.
Differentiation used to scare me. Well, not scare exactly. Overwhelm is more like it. I felt stressed enough by whole class lesson planning, and could not imagine how I could have the time, or energy, to make related but different plans for groups of students at various levels of learning. It always sounded like a great idea, but realizing and making it happen are two very different things!
Since beginning to teach in the center based gifted program, differentiation, rigor and relevance have become my guidelines. My teaching partner and I use many of the tools we have talked about in our Thursday evening class. Tic-tac-toe menus are used for writing projects, novel study products, and word study activities. I just put together and used a tiered lesson for multiplication and division, as my students have three distinct levels of mastery in those subjects. While I worked with a small group who are still a bit wobbly using the long division algorithm, another group used multiplication in writing a multi-step word problem based on their favorite fairy tale character. The highest level group was given the task of thinking like SOL test writers, and creating multiple choice division and multiplication problems that included distracters and had “reasonable” wrong answer choices. Each group loved what they were doing, and stayed focused and energized as they worked.
Using differentiation in my lesson planning is still a bit overwhelming, but the energy and engagement of my students is motivating me to try as many ways as I can think of to keep that going. I love that coming to class each week gives me more resources to use to make differentiation much less intimidating.
I have really enjoyed my student interviews and reading the information sent in by their moms and dads. The students enjoy talking about their pictures and I feel a closer bond with these students that have shared special moments with me. So far, I have tried to use the personal information to make them feel protected and safe in the classroom. For example, one student told me that she was the Uno champ at home, so I brought in the game to teach the class and that student helped to teach it! Today I gave my kindergarteners the Student Interest Inventory and it was halarious! They love everything from animals to pirates, I was hoping to only have a few things circled, but every time I asked them if they liked something, I got the reply, "Oh yeah!" With all these likes I'm not sure how I'm going to do my Learning cards? I did notice that a lot of students said that they didn't like puzzles, but during the Daily 5 they flock to the puzzles on the shelf. I wonder if families sit together and put together puzzles or play games? I do believe that puzzles require a specific attention span, which could be the reason for dislike by some students. My puzzles do not have more than 20 pieces.
I am open to anything that helps my students to learn math. The learning style survey has been an eye opener for me. Lecture seems to be one preferred learning style but there are others that I need to look at. I plan to start using a couple of the toolbox strategies soon. Think-tac-toe and learning contracts may work in my algebra and precalculus classes. I already use some strategies that have be mentioned. I like using videos and web sites to augment my lectures. Since the students at my school have focus areas, a good end-of-year assignment in geometry is writing a paper on now geometry is used in their focus area. That clearly show now math is relates to something that my student are interested in.
I also enjoyed doing my learning style and student interest inventories. I chose a small group as a representative sample of my classroom (mixed-abilities) and was interested to look at the results of both. Most of my students seemed to enjoy projects and games, but there was also some preference for independent study as well. Like Krista, I emphasized to my students to only circle the things that they were truly interested in (if you don't know what it is, chances are you aren't interested in it) but they circled numerous interests. A couple of students picked opera of all things and when I was going over it and asking them "do you know what opera is?" they were able to tell me.
I continue to work on implementing differentiation strategies in my classroom. Honestly in 2nd grade Reading is the focus, so that is the first thing I work on differentiating. Last year there was a big emphasis on "I Can" and having baskets at each station to give them choices. I think the learning contracts will be a great tool to use to give students choice and hold them accountable for what they are doing when they are not at the teaching station. I remember back to when I was still in college doing observation hours and I observed this awesome teacher who used learning contracts and the students were working amazingly well together and independently. I think the areas I need to work the most on differentiating are Science/Social Science and feel that the different things we have talked about in class (Think Dots, Rafts, Frayer Model...) will be excellent ways for me to improve my differentiation in these areas.
My classroom of students receives an “extra” special this year because I am the team leader for my grade level. Once a week, a team of fabulous teachers has taken my class. They very easily could have used this time for study hall, short mini lessons… but they didn’t. They have started a Digital Writing program for my students! Even though I am not there during that instructional time (I’m at grade level meetings), I do collaborate and plan activities for my students with the team.
The first semester we worked on book trailers. I was so impressed on how they turned out. While we were brainstorming together as a team to decide on another digital writing format, I immediately thought of the RAFT strategy we had talked about in class. It has been working beautifully! We wanted something that was guided for students to write about, but still had some structure.
Our idea is for my students to write eBooks and then upload them on the school iPads for incoming kindergarteners. They will be writing persuasively, trying to convince/teach the incoming students about the school motto and expectations in different areas of the school (the playground, the cafeteria, the hallway, etc.).
I think my students really appreciated having some freedom with their role, audience, format, and topic. I have some students that are aliens, writing a ABC book to the principal, about playground expectations. I can’t wait to see the finished product!
First, I think my favorite night of class so far was when we talked about the fabulous strategies of cubing, RAFTS, learning centers, and curriculum compacting. Not that I haven't loved EVERY class! ;) But I left that night SO excited to try some of these things out. This is my first course in the Gifted endorsement track, so I can't WAIT to learn more strategies. (In fact, this is my first year with the GT cluster, and I am in love with this group... I absolutely adore watching each child think and process their way to some amazing insights.) I think I was most excited about the RAFTs. Of course, I remember during CRISS training their mention. But, as a new teacher, I was not at all ready to hear all these strategies and ideas when my day-to-day involved surviving. I was developing my craft, not fine-tuning. Now that I am in my fifth year I feel ready to really tackle differentiation. I have used Think-tac-toe boards, and a few other things, but I can’t wait to really try something major. That leads me to my second thing I wanted to post about...
...which is curriculum compacting! As we were learning about this a few weeks back, I was overwhelmed with an odd emotion... guilt. And stupidity. Why hadn’t I been doing this all year??? Why didn’t I do this last year, when I was collab and had an even wider range of student abilities? I have a tiny math class since 11 leave me for the 4/5 class. But within this minuscule group are 11 different abilities and needs.. a few of which are bored. :( I am in need of some curriculum compacting! I can’t wait to give this a try. I have a student teacher right now, so for the next few weeks she is with us I am not teaching, but will use this time to really plan out something fabulous. I hope to assess a few and see if they can test out of the next math unit (which is... elapsed time and measurement?). I am excited to try this. Now keep in mind this is with kids who aren’t even technically labeled “GT” but are extremely strong math students. And I plan to also keep this as documentation if needed when it comes time to making the 5/6 math classes for next year. I suppose that I need to remember that hindsight sees 20/20, and there is no use beating myself up for not doing things that now seem obvious. But this only motivates me to try it and see how it goes! I am very excited about trying some things in my classroom, and about learning more in this course. Jana, I can’t wait to learn more strategies!
So I just wanted to take some time to reflect on my thoughts and areas I am working on in my classroom that connect to our class. As you know I teach general ed…mixed with high ability students (one in fact I am in the process of putting through to GT. Fingers crossed!), middle ability students, and lower struggling students. Now that we are halfway through the year I think utilizing ideas such as RAFTs would be beneficial for the end of the 9-weeks to review important concepts in Science, Social Studies, and even Math. I was thinking that for the end of the 3rd and 4th 9-weeks (because at this point my guys will be more capable, I would use RAFTs). In first grade we give an end of the 9-weeks test, but I thought this could be another way to have my kids really reflect and demonstrate a solid understanding. In the packet we received with RAFT examples, there was a cute idea for multiplication and division, so it sparked interest in me, that I could in fact incorporate math! I am not sure how I would approach my idea; I think I would play with it to see what would work better. But I had the thought to make a math RAFT, a Science one, and then a Social Studies one. I would allow the kids to pick which area they would like. So if a child picked math for example, it would have ideas of Place Value (tens and ones), Fractions (1/2, 1/3, 1/4), etc. I hope I could pull four focus areas for each subject’s RAFT. Anywho….this is something I am working on in my head, and hoping to construct to turn in!!
Also, Krista and I have been working with our Student Profile “stuff”. As we shared in class, we have had to tweak how we approached finding Interest and Learning Styles with our little guys. We made a PowerPoint presentation that had pictures for different areas such as: art, music, drama, building, reading, writing, etc. And we had a student recording sheet, where if the student likes it, they simply circle it. One downfall is that our little guys like everything!!!! Haha. We also sent home a parent questionnaire to help us better understand our children’s learning style and more in depth interest. It was really neat and exciting to see what the parents wrote! We also asked for the parents to send in pictures that represented their child, it could photos, coloring pictures, etc. Then we sat with each student (we picked 5 or so), and interviewed them, having them tell us about their picture, and then asked them questions from an interview questionnaire we made! We have been busy with the Student Profile part, and it has been fun. I would love to use it all at the beginning of next year, and feel it would be very beneficial for me as a teacher.
One of my favorite things from class so far has been the learning style and interest inventory. I did this with my whole class and at this point of the year I wasn’t really surprised by the interest of my students. I already had picked up on most of that. I was surprised by some of their favorite learning styles. Students I thought would like games and projects more didn’t. Students I thought would like independent study activities did not. It was an eye opener. I really feel in love with this after I gave it to my students. I can’t wait to use it at the beginning of next year.
I will say my students didn’t follow direction on it at all. My students didn’t circle their favorite five things. So I will take this into account next year so I don’t have as much work on myself as I did this year. It was a lot of work because I didn’t have time to sit down with my students and walk them through the marking sheet. At the beginning of next year I do plan to sit down with my students and have them do the markings. I think they would get a lot out of doing it themselves. I can’t wait until I’m able to do this at the beginning of next year.
Class has helped my step back and think what else can I do to reach all my students. I have enjoyed the learning style and interest inventories. I am excited to get to know my 2nd grade collab class better. They are just a neat bunch of kiddos. I have learned a lot out about each student. I love being able to connect with even the quietest student. I plan on doing the inventories next year! In this class we have SPED (hence why I am there) to high ability possible GT kids, so there is a wide range of abilities!! Luckily during Math and Reading I am in there to co-teach. My collab teacher and I are excited to put some more differentiation strategies into good use!! We already use flexible ability grouping in both math and reading with varied activities based on their levels. Together we plan on implementing some more strategies to keep our classroom hopping! We also want to use the data from the inventories to build more of our lessons and activities.
I think about Sternberg's Three Intelligences a lot in plaaning my lessons to try to reach a variety of "thinkers". Sometimes its a challenge to try to get analytical thinkers to feel comfortable with developing their creative thinking while trying to get creative thinkers to be a bit more practical. I try to build my lessons so they have a portion that is "formula based" for students who need that sequence but also open ended enough to allow students to solve the problem in a different way. I'd like to help students tap into all the styles of thinking so they can be more flexible in solving problems in the future.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that the Great Seal is like America's birth mark? Did you know that Articles of Confederation is like building a house out of sand rather than bricks. Did you know that a federal system of government was like yin and yang symbol. Did you know that the Bill of Rights is like a flying bald eagle.
ReplyDeleteThese are some of the amazing things my students have come up with here recently in some activities we've been doing. The first simile came from a Socratic seminar I did with my GT kids during our study on the US Constitution. The discussion that came about was absolutely amazing and eye opening. It's hard to believe that 6th graders can come up with this type of stuff.
The next ones came from a review activity I did using the Frayer Model. I split my kids up into 6 groups. Each group was assigned a major topic of our unit: Federal System, Bill of Rights, The Great Compromise, The US Constitution, etc. Each group had to 1. Define the term 2. Come up Accomplishments 3. Explain why it's important 4. Explain what it's like.
My kids wowed me, especially with the similes they came up with. Not many adult Americans can define what a federal system of government is. I even asked my husband who is a walking dictionary to tell me what it is and he couldn't do it. So, for 6th graders to understand it enough to come up with similes knocked me off my feat. After learning about the Frayer Model, I used it immediately and thought it was an extremely powerful activity. The kids really got to thinking, even my non-GT classes. It really pushed these kids to the next level. I have been under-estimating a couple of my classes all year and this just proved that all kids can think.
Now, I'm in the middle of a WebQuest on Westward Expansion. Wish me luck!
I have Westward Expansion materials. All based on Bloom's. Can be used for anchor activities, interactive bulletin board/learning center or to populate fields on a Tic/Tac/Toe, choice board or menu. Still working on the unit? Let me know and I will bring it on Thursday.
DeleteWell, gosh...I wish I had seen your comment sooner. If you still wish to share, I'd love to see what you got! Thanks!
DeleteDifferentiation used to scare me. Well, not scare exactly. Overwhelm is more like it. I felt stressed enough by whole class lesson planning, and could not imagine how I could have the time, or energy, to make related but different plans for groups of students at various levels of learning. It always sounded like a great idea, but realizing and making it happen are two very different things!
ReplyDeleteSince beginning to teach in the center based gifted program, differentiation, rigor and relevance have become my guidelines. My teaching partner and I use many of the tools we have talked about in our Thursday evening class. Tic-tac-toe menus are used for writing projects, novel study products, and word study activities. I just put together and used a tiered lesson for multiplication and division, as my students have three distinct levels of mastery in those subjects. While I worked with a small group who are still a bit wobbly using the long division algorithm, another group used multiplication in writing a multi-step word problem based on their favorite fairy tale character. The highest level group was given the task of thinking like SOL test writers, and creating multiple choice division and multiplication problems that included distracters and had “reasonable” wrong answer choices. Each group loved what they were doing, and stayed focused and energized as they worked.
Using differentiation in my lesson planning is still a bit overwhelming, but the energy and engagement of my students is motivating me to try as many ways as I can think of to keep that going. I love that coming to class each week gives me more resources to use to make differentiation much less intimidating.
I have really enjoyed my student interviews and reading the information sent in by their moms and dads. The students enjoy talking about their pictures and I feel a closer bond with these students that have shared special moments with me. So far, I have tried to use the personal information to make them feel protected and safe in the classroom. For example, one student told me that she was the Uno champ at home, so I brought in the game to teach the class and that student helped to teach it! Today I gave my kindergarteners the Student Interest Inventory and it was halarious! They love everything from animals to pirates, I was hoping to only have a few things circled, but every time I asked them if they liked something, I got the reply, "Oh yeah!" With all these likes I'm not sure how I'm going to do my Learning cards? I did notice that a lot of students said that they didn't like puzzles, but during the Daily 5 they flock to the puzzles on the shelf. I wonder if families sit together and put together puzzles or play games? I do believe that puzzles require a specific attention span, which could be the reason for dislike by some students. My puzzles do not have more than 20 pieces.
ReplyDeleteI am open to anything that helps my students to learn math. The learning style survey has been an eye opener for me. Lecture seems to be one preferred learning style but there are others that I need to look at. I plan to start using a couple of the toolbox strategies soon. Think-tac-toe and learning contracts may work in my algebra and precalculus classes. I already use some strategies that have be mentioned. I like using videos and web sites to augment my lectures. Since the students at my school have focus areas, a good end-of-year assignment in geometry is writing a paper on now geometry is used in their focus area. That clearly show now math is relates to something that my student are interested in.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed doing my learning style and student interest inventories. I chose a small group as a representative sample of my classroom (mixed-abilities) and was interested to look at the results of both. Most of my students seemed to enjoy projects and games, but there was also some preference for independent study as well. Like Krista, I emphasized to my students to only circle the things that they were truly interested in (if you don't know what it is, chances are you aren't interested in it) but they circled numerous interests. A couple of students picked opera of all things and when I was going over it and asking them "do you know what opera is?" they were able to tell me.
ReplyDeleteI continue to work on implementing differentiation strategies in my classroom. Honestly in 2nd grade Reading is the focus, so that is the first thing I work on differentiating. Last year there was a big emphasis on "I Can" and having baskets at each station to give them choices. I think the learning contracts will be a great tool to use to give students choice and hold them accountable for what they are doing when they are not at the teaching station. I remember back to when I was still in college doing observation hours and I observed this awesome teacher who used learning contracts and the students were working amazingly well together and independently. I think the areas I need to work the most on differentiating are Science/Social Science and feel that the different things we have talked about in class (Think Dots, Rafts, Frayer Model...) will be excellent ways for me to improve my differentiation in these areas.
My classroom of students receives an “extra” special this year because I am the team leader for my grade level. Once a week, a team of fabulous teachers has taken my class. They very easily could have used this time for study hall, short mini lessons… but they didn’t. They have started a Digital Writing program for my students! Even though I am not there during that instructional time (I’m at grade level meetings), I do collaborate and plan activities for my students with the team.
ReplyDeleteThe first semester we worked on book trailers. I was so impressed on how they turned out. While we were brainstorming together as a team to decide on another digital writing format, I immediately thought of the RAFT strategy we had talked about in class. It has been working beautifully! We wanted something that was guided for students to write about, but still had some structure.
Our idea is for my students to write eBooks and then upload them on the school iPads for incoming kindergarteners. They will be writing persuasively, trying to convince/teach the incoming students about the school motto and expectations in different areas of the school (the playground, the cafeteria, the hallway, etc.).
I think my students really appreciated having some freedom with their role, audience, format, and topic. I have some students that are aliens, writing a ABC book to the principal, about playground expectations. I can’t wait to see the finished product!
Two things I wanted to reflect/post about.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I think my favorite night of class so far was when we talked about the fabulous strategies of cubing, RAFTS, learning centers, and curriculum compacting. Not that I haven't loved EVERY class! ;) But I left that night SO excited to try some of these things out. This is my first course in the Gifted endorsement track, so I can't WAIT to learn more strategies. (In fact, this is my first year with the GT cluster, and I am in love with this group... I absolutely adore watching each child think and process their way to some amazing insights.) I think I was most excited about the RAFTs. Of course, I remember during CRISS training their mention. But, as a new teacher, I was not at all ready to hear all these strategies and ideas when my day-to-day involved surviving. I was developing my craft, not fine-tuning. Now that I am in my fifth year I feel ready to really tackle differentiation. I have used Think-tac-toe boards, and a few other things, but I can’t wait to really try something major. That leads me to my second thing I wanted to post about...
...which is curriculum compacting! As we were learning about this a few weeks back, I was overwhelmed with an odd emotion... guilt. And stupidity. Why hadn’t I been doing this all year??? Why didn’t I do this last year, when I was collab and had an even wider range of student abilities? I have a tiny math class since 11 leave me for the 4/5 class. But within this minuscule group are 11 different abilities and needs.. a few of which are bored. :( I am in need of some curriculum compacting! I can’t wait to give this a try. I have a student teacher right now, so for the next few weeks she is with us I am not teaching, but will use this time to really plan out something fabulous. I hope to assess a few and see if they can test out of the next math unit (which is... elapsed time and measurement?). I am excited to try this. Now keep in mind this is with kids who aren’t even technically labeled “GT” but are extremely strong math students. And I plan to also keep this as documentation if needed when it comes time to making the 5/6 math classes for next year. I suppose that I need to remember that hindsight sees 20/20, and there is no use beating myself up for not doing things that now seem obvious. But this only motivates me to try it and see how it goes! I am very excited about trying some things in my classroom, and about learning more in this course. Jana, I can’t wait to learn more strategies!
So I just wanted to take some time to reflect on my thoughts and areas I am working on in my classroom that connect to our class. As you know I teach general ed…mixed with high ability students (one in fact I am in the process of putting through to GT. Fingers crossed!), middle ability students, and lower struggling students. Now that we are halfway through the year I think utilizing ideas such as RAFTs would be beneficial for the end of the 9-weeks to review important concepts in Science, Social Studies, and even Math. I was thinking that for the end of the 3rd and 4th 9-weeks (because at this point my guys will be more capable, I would use RAFTs). In first grade we give an end of the 9-weeks test, but I thought this could be another way to have my kids really reflect and demonstrate a solid understanding. In the packet we received with RAFT examples, there was a cute idea for multiplication and division, so it sparked interest in me, that I could in fact incorporate math! I am not sure how I would approach my idea; I think I would play with it to see what would work better. But I had the thought to make a math RAFT, a Science one, and then a Social Studies one. I would allow the kids to pick which area they would like. So if a child picked math for example, it would have ideas of Place Value (tens and ones), Fractions (1/2, 1/3, 1/4), etc. I hope I could pull four focus areas for each subject’s RAFT. Anywho….this is something I am working on in my head, and hoping to construct to turn in!!
ReplyDeleteAlso, Krista and I have been working with our Student Profile “stuff”. As we shared in class, we have had to tweak how we approached finding Interest and Learning Styles with our little guys. We made a PowerPoint presentation that had pictures for different areas such as: art, music, drama, building, reading, writing, etc. And we had a student recording sheet, where if the student likes it, they simply circle it. One downfall is that our little guys like everything!!!! Haha. We also sent home a parent questionnaire to help us better understand our children’s learning style and more in depth interest. It was really neat and exciting to see what the parents wrote! We also asked for the parents to send in pictures that represented their child, it could photos, coloring pictures, etc. Then we sat with each student (we picked 5 or so), and interviewed them, having them tell us about their picture, and then asked them questions from an interview questionnaire we made! We have been busy with the Student Profile part, and it has been fun. I would love to use it all at the beginning of next year, and feel it would be very beneficial for me as a teacher.
One of my favorite things from class so far has been the learning style and interest inventory. I did this with my whole class and at this point of the year I wasn’t really surprised by the interest of my students. I already had picked up on most of that. I was surprised by some of their favorite learning styles. Students I thought would like games and projects more didn’t. Students I thought would like independent study activities did not. It was an eye opener. I really feel in love with this after I gave it to my students. I can’t wait to use it at the beginning of next year.
DeleteI will say my students didn’t follow direction on it at all. My students didn’t circle their favorite five things. So I will take this into account next year so I don’t have as much work on myself as I did this year. It was a lot of work because I didn’t have time to sit down with my students and walk them through the marking sheet. At the beginning of next year I do plan to sit down with my students and have them do the markings. I think they would get a lot out of doing it themselves. I can’t wait until I’m able to do this at the beginning of next year.
Class has helped my step back and think what else can I do to reach all my students. I have enjoyed the learning style and interest inventories. I am excited to get to know my 2nd grade collab class better. They are just a neat bunch of kiddos. I have learned a lot out about each student. I love being able to connect with even the quietest student. I plan on doing the inventories next year! In this class we have SPED (hence why I am there) to high ability possible GT kids, so there is a wide range of abilities!! Luckily during Math and Reading I am in there to co-teach. My collab teacher and I are excited to put some more differentiation strategies into good use!! We already use flexible ability grouping in both math and reading with varied activities based on their levels. Together we plan on implementing some more strategies to keep our classroom hopping! We also want to use the data from the inventories to build more of our lessons and activities.
ReplyDelete