Spoken Word Poems
2. Daniel Beaty performs "Knock Knock"
Friday, September 12, 2014
I love Sarah Kay performing "If I should have a daughter..." and Daniel Beaty's performance of "Knock Knock"
2. Daniel Beaty performs "Knock Knock"
Thursday, September 11, 2014
11 Intermediate Guided Reading Lessons for Our Class
Super Soaker Skills
Way cooler than GR lessons, we are calling them Super Soaker Skills because these are the 1) skills students need to soak in yesterday and 2) it makes me think of the top dog water guns.
These 11 skills are the most important of the 20 for our classroom. We've combined a few and added details as necessary to meet our needs. Students can use this as a reference when completing assignments or to review periodically.
Enjoy!
Way cooler than GR lessons, we are calling them Super Soaker Skills because these are the 1) skills students need to soak in yesterday and 2) it makes me think of the top dog water guns.
These 11 skills are the most important of the 20 for our classroom. We've combined a few and added details as necessary to meet our needs. Students can use this as a reference when completing assignments or to review periodically.
1. Selecting Books and Creating a Successful Reading Classroom
2. Ways We Choose Books
3. Executing SSR
2. Ways We Choose Books
3. Executing SSR
4. Making Good Book Choices
5. Reading Is Thinking: P.1 Mnemonics
5. Reading Is Thinking: P.1 Mnemonics
6. Reading Is Thinking: P.2 RIT Definitions
7. Characteristics of Fiction, Nonfiction, & Poetry
8. Genres within Fiction and Nonfiction
9. Keeping a Record of Reading
10. Writing Letters About Reading
8. Genres within Fiction and Nonfiction
9. Keeping a Record of Reading
10. Writing Letters About Reading
11. Writing Responses to Each Other
Enjoy!
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
S-W-A-G-G-E-R Assessment Skills #Swaggerskills
"Why didn't you answer the whole question?"
"How can you get that wrong when we've gone over it for a month?"
"I know you know the correct answer, but for some reason you chose the wrong one..."
"Your answer should be twice as longer if you are following the directions."
Sound familiar? I've heard and said these sentences before! We always tell students to work harder or take their time, but what does that really mean?
I empathize with students and the increasing demands of academic success. I was horrible at tests, couldn't maintain attention long enough to hear the topic introduced, and am pretty sure every teacher I've had was speaking a different language. I wish I had more teachers who understood how to reach out to my need for an engaging lesson repeated ten times in ten different ways to help me feel smart. Instead, I felt dumb, insecure, and hid my lack of understanding with humor.
Just this summer, I was at an AVID conference in San Diego, learning about a program I had never heard of before. I was asked to go as a fill in last minute and was incredibly pumped to get a head start to a new school year. I love learning about how to teach better. After the first day, the obvious conversation starter So what do you think of AVID? was all anyone was asking, and rightfully so. But I didn't understand what AVID meant. A few days of workshops later, I still didn't understand what the point of AVID was. On my terms, I was still unable to give an in depth description of what the program stands for, or how it was any different from the Common Core. Slowly my understanding was coming together. Eventually, with perfect timing on the last day, I finally felt like I understood and appreciated the value of AVID. At first I didn't mind being the odd man out, feeling less knowledgable. Over time, I could feel peers becoming less patient with my need for clarification, and I started to feel uncomfortable. I had to remind myself not worry about being so open with my lack of understanding. Obviously, you now get to hear my carefully developed definition:
AVID is a program that collected the best of the best practice resources, created a few of their own- maybe more than a few-, and now teaches schools to use AVID's identity, resources, methods, and culture to implement the Common Core and all its values. AVID specifically focuses on reaching out to potential first generation college graduates to provide the skills, self worth, and motivation to excel through middle school, high school, and college, with different lifelong skills and strategies for each subgroup.
The point of explaining my struggle to understand the core meaning of AVID goes back to people like me who think more abstractly or simply need to be explained things multiple times in order to understand. In my smaller Critical Reading strand (workshop), we were asked to raise our hands to acknowledge our experience with various activities. I would admit to zero, no experience, right before the teacher said "Obviously we all know what [every topic] is." Oh great, thanks for the clue after the vote! As she continued to elaborate, I realized I'd be doing the same activities for years but knew them by different names. Again, I was feeling slightly humiliated with a powerful urge to defend myself because I was the only one who thought I didn't use the activity. I remember feeling so confidence and fortunate to be exposed to the program, and then I remember feeling incredibly inadequate by my interactions. Hello people, they didn't have AVID in Ohio!
These examples of feeling discouraged from directions sound silly, irrelevant, and minute. They aren't. When our kids have these seemingly small feelings of failure, it is crucial that we acknowledge their intelligence potential. Too much of feeling wrong or down, especially during the developing years, can potentially damage if not put a hold on your social-emotional development. Like we tell our kids to take their time, create a longer answer, slow down, and go over their assessments before turning in, students are unsure what specific tasks they should be doing. Even when you might be equally justified by being confused from vague directions, it is damaging to your self-esteem. Yes, you can build confidence. I love that I no longer care (minus the occasional initial hurt reaction), but we can always take a look at how to be more clear with our directions.
Teaching students how to correctly answer questions benefits special education, gifted and talented students, all subjects and interests, and teaches students how to work hard while balancing fun. Most importantly, this unit creates a sense of community and positive character building, two of the most important aspects of successful classroom management. Surprisingly, students with lower ability and gifted students will miss the same problems, but for different reasons. This unit is great for helping even the smarties be more open minded to the idea of making a mistake, and to try to hunt for it in their completed assignment. I've noticed these subgroup of children often uses internal reasoning to justify why their answer is right, and they've got evidence to do it. But by this point, it seems the student has already made up his or her mind on the correct answer, and thus is blind and unable to see any mistakes.
Official Benefits:
Regardless of whether it's our fault, the student's, or any combo, let's prevent it from happening ever again!!!! ... yea, yea, but we try.
Description of The Unit:
#Swaggerskills, pronounced "Hashtag Swagger Skills," is a list of seven steps to remember when completing multiple choice and extended answer assignments using the mnemonic SWAGGER. #Swaggerskills theme also includes an aligned swagger-themed toolkit, where assessment helping "tools" and their connection are explained. Look at the order below to see the video Hanna and Bryant found somewhere along the path of life and went out on a limb at an attempt to hook students with a not-too-cool-for-school theme. Now, students learn the mnemonic SWAGGER with multiple student checklists, "dog tags" students must earn for each letter, 120+ #Swaggerskills ELA vocabulary words with activities and games. We end with a dance party and students strut their swagger walks towards their hard earn toolkits. The student toolkits include accessories that qualify both as cool enough to be swagger and serve an effective purpose with completing assessments. (For example, a neon slap bracelet is swagger because it's neon. Neon colors also help students focus on reading better. The neon bracelet is used as a bookmark as students read passages and questions.)
PDF Unit: Swagger Assessment Skills
Aligned PowerPoint: Swagger Assessment Skills PP
Sample Pages:
1. introduce the Swagger Wagon (over 12 million views) video using the pre made PowerPoint. You can play this multiple times every day from here on out with the students.
2. You use the included PP to teach students the seven types of swagger.
3. Give each student a blank SWAGGER board, free of dog tags.
4. You use the powerpoint or your own activities to have students demonstrate the mastery of each skill.
5. As a student shows you they mastered a skill- you determine how and when or use the suggested instructions- you give them a dog tag relating to the corresponding skill. For example, Johnny's multiple choice question has Y M M N by each letter choice, and he wrote his reason why to the side. You see this when you go by Johnny, so you give him the lime green dog tag "G."
6. Introduce, teach, and request students use the individual EVIDENCE checklist to help answer all questions to the best of student ability, while encouraging higher level thinking, and preventing mistakes.
7. When all students have earned all seven dog tags, their board will spell out S-W-A-G-G-E-R (like bingo, but it's not luck!).
8. Have a reward ceremony (take ten minutes or whole class period) where students show you completed board and mandatory swagger dance moves (a chance to be goofy), to earn their #Swaggerskills Master certificates and toolkits.
9. Continue to use toolkit resources, SWAGGER and EVIDENCE acronyms as expectation for students.
As a side note, I have signed up on donorschoose.org to help collect supplies for my students this year. We need the supplies to make our graphic organizers, the props for our games to review skills, strategies, and vocabulary, and the supplies for student toolkits. We have over 200 seventh grade students to provide supplies for and convince mustache erasers, neon slap bracelets, and colored ink pens are totally in. We appreciate your support! http://www.donorschoose.org/misscrosby?rf=link-siteshare-2014-08-teacher_account-teacher_2395543
"How can you get that wrong when we've gone over it for a month?"
"I know you know the correct answer, but for some reason you chose the wrong one..."
"Your answer should be twice as longer if you are following the directions."
Sound familiar? I've heard and said these sentences before! We always tell students to work harder or take their time, but what does that really mean?
I empathize with students and the increasing demands of academic success. I was horrible at tests, couldn't maintain attention long enough to hear the topic introduced, and am pretty sure every teacher I've had was speaking a different language. I wish I had more teachers who understood how to reach out to my need for an engaging lesson repeated ten times in ten different ways to help me feel smart. Instead, I felt dumb, insecure, and hid my lack of understanding with humor.
Just this summer, I was at an AVID conference in San Diego, learning about a program I had never heard of before. I was asked to go as a fill in last minute and was incredibly pumped to get a head start to a new school year. I love learning about how to teach better. After the first day, the obvious conversation starter So what do you think of AVID? was all anyone was asking, and rightfully so. But I didn't understand what AVID meant. A few days of workshops later, I still didn't understand what the point of AVID was. On my terms, I was still unable to give an in depth description of what the program stands for, or how it was any different from the Common Core. Slowly my understanding was coming together. Eventually, with perfect timing on the last day, I finally felt like I understood and appreciated the value of AVID. At first I didn't mind being the odd man out, feeling less knowledgable. Over time, I could feel peers becoming less patient with my need for clarification, and I started to feel uncomfortable. I had to remind myself not worry about being so open with my lack of understanding. Obviously, you now get to hear my carefully developed definition:
AVID is a program that collected the best of the best practice resources, created a few of their own- maybe more than a few-, and now teaches schools to use AVID's identity, resources, methods, and culture to implement the Common Core and all its values. AVID specifically focuses on reaching out to potential first generation college graduates to provide the skills, self worth, and motivation to excel through middle school, high school, and college, with different lifelong skills and strategies for each subgroup.
The point of explaining my struggle to understand the core meaning of AVID goes back to people like me who think more abstractly or simply need to be explained things multiple times in order to understand. In my smaller Critical Reading strand (workshop), we were asked to raise our hands to acknowledge our experience with various activities. I would admit to zero, no experience, right before the teacher said "Obviously we all know what [every topic] is." Oh great, thanks for the clue after the vote! As she continued to elaborate, I realized I'd be doing the same activities for years but knew them by different names. Again, I was feeling slightly humiliated with a powerful urge to defend myself because I was the only one who thought I didn't use the activity. I remember feeling so confidence and fortunate to be exposed to the program, and then I remember feeling incredibly inadequate by my interactions. Hello people, they didn't have AVID in Ohio!
These examples of feeling discouraged from directions sound silly, irrelevant, and minute. They aren't. When our kids have these seemingly small feelings of failure, it is crucial that we acknowledge their intelligence potential. Too much of feeling wrong or down, especially during the developing years, can potentially damage if not put a hold on your social-emotional development. Like we tell our kids to take their time, create a longer answer, slow down, and go over their assessments before turning in, students are unsure what specific tasks they should be doing. Even when you might be equally justified by being confused from vague directions, it is damaging to your self-esteem. Yes, you can build confidence. I love that I no longer care (minus the occasional initial hurt reaction), but we can always take a look at how to be more clear with our directions.
Teaching students how to correctly answer questions benefits special education, gifted and talented students, all subjects and interests, and teaches students how to work hard while balancing fun. Most importantly, this unit creates a sense of community and positive character building, two of the most important aspects of successful classroom management. Surprisingly, students with lower ability and gifted students will miss the same problems, but for different reasons. This unit is great for helping even the smarties be more open minded to the idea of making a mistake, and to try to hunt for it in their completed assignment. I've noticed these subgroup of children often uses internal reasoning to justify why their answer is right, and they've got evidence to do it. But by this point, it seems the student has already made up his or her mind on the correct answer, and thus is blind and unable to see any mistakes.
Official Benefits:
- Increase attention span with self checking and movement with tools
- Build student confidence with written and multiple choice responses, reading assessments, and teaching students to
defend their answers - Prevent mistakes to help students earn scores reflective of ability
- Encourages parent involvement
- Teach students to keep the academic expectation high while balancing fun
Regardless of whether it's our fault, the student's, or any combo, let's prevent it from happening ever again!!!! ... yea, yea, but we try.
Description of The Unit:
#Swaggerskills, pronounced "Hashtag Swagger Skills," is a list of seven steps to remember when completing multiple choice and extended answer assignments using the mnemonic SWAGGER. #Swaggerskills theme also includes an aligned swagger-themed toolkit, where assessment helping "tools" and their connection are explained. Look at the order below to see the video Hanna and Bryant found somewhere along the path of life and went out on a limb at an attempt to hook students with a not-too-cool-for-school theme. Now, students learn the mnemonic SWAGGER with multiple student checklists, "dog tags" students must earn for each letter, 120+ #Swaggerskills ELA vocabulary words with activities and games. We end with a dance party and students strut their swagger walks towards their hard earn toolkits. The student toolkits include accessories that qualify both as cool enough to be swagger and serve an effective purpose with completing assessments. (For example, a neon slap bracelet is swagger because it's neon. Neon colors also help students focus on reading better. The neon bracelet is used as a bookmark as students read passages and questions.)
PDF Unit: Swagger Assessment Skills
Aligned PowerPoint: Swagger Assessment Skills PP
Sample Pages:
#Swaggerskills Powerpoint:
2. You use the included PP to teach students the seven types of swagger.
3. Give each student a blank SWAGGER board, free of dog tags.
4. You use the powerpoint or your own activities to have students demonstrate the mastery of each skill.
5. As a student shows you they mastered a skill- you determine how and when or use the suggested instructions- you give them a dog tag relating to the corresponding skill. For example, Johnny's multiple choice question has Y M M N by each letter choice, and he wrote his reason why to the side. You see this when you go by Johnny, so you give him the lime green dog tag "G."
6. Introduce, teach, and request students use the individual EVIDENCE checklist to help answer all questions to the best of student ability, while encouraging higher level thinking, and preventing mistakes.
7. When all students have earned all seven dog tags, their board will spell out S-W-A-G-G-E-R (like bingo, but it's not luck!).
8. Have a reward ceremony (take ten minutes or whole class period) where students show you completed board and mandatory swagger dance moves (a chance to be goofy), to earn their #Swaggerskills Master certificates and toolkits.
9. Continue to use toolkit resources, SWAGGER and EVIDENCE acronyms as expectation for students.
As a side note, I have signed up on donorschoose.org to help collect supplies for my students this year. We need the supplies to make our graphic organizers, the props for our games to review skills, strategies, and vocabulary, and the supplies for student toolkits. We have over 200 seventh grade students to provide supplies for and convince mustache erasers, neon slap bracelets, and colored ink pens are totally in. We appreciate your support! http://www.donorschoose.org/misscrosby?rf=link-siteshare-2014-08-teacher_account-teacher_2395543
#somanyemotions Page Getting Started!
Can you avoid the emotional roller coaster of middle school completely?
No, sorry. However, the more you read about how emotions work, the more you will learn and be able to integrate emotionally intelligent behaviors into your mind and reactions. Thus, the more you practice and are aware your emotions, the more control you will have of yours. :)
Check out everything I post on here; I pick my favorites that I know will help tweens of all personality and emotional types!
Must View Images:
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| This is how information enters your brain. And mine. |
Must Read Articles:
1. "Mentally Strong People: The 13 Things They Avoid" by Cheryl Conner
2. "9 Things Emotionally Intelligent People Won't Do" by Dr. Travis Bradberry
Must Check Out Mini Lessons:
1. Think about the words situation, thought, and emotion. How are they different? You can click on the image go to the activity!
1. "ABCs of Thinking and Feeling" (aka ABCs of Emotions) - There is a summary below, but if you click on it, you will see all the examples, different definitions, and complete the interactive worksheets to learn how this can help your overall happiness level for the longterm!
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Monday, September 8, 2014
The Common Core, The CCRS, The New Standards, and All Other Nicknames
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| Click on the Table of Contents to see all 40 images! |
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