#214EdPrep: Karolina Shares Her Teaching Experience

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts discussing the collaboration of the Collab Lab and our EG Ed Prep students.  Please follow along on our journey using the hashtag #214EdPrep or clicking on the label #214EdPrep in the word cloud!

By:  Karolina Rusiniak

I intern at Clearmont Elementary school with the ESL program. The teachers compose normal lessons with the students, such as math centers etc. just like they would in their regular English classroom. I decided to try the app Classkick with the class this last Friday.  [See this past blog post about the Spark Session on Classkick.] I prepared a slideshow of about 12 pages of line graphs and worksheets and fraction free response questions. 

When I arrived, the class was divided into six groups each working at a different math center and would rotate every ten minutes or so. The students were very excited to do the classkick! They told me they have never done such an activity where they could directly write on their chrome book and have the teacher check their work automatically. They informed me that they loved the fact that I could check their work as they go and that I could give them stickers as rewards. Also, they loved working at their own pace through the presentation. 

What we found as a challenge was that it was hard to write on their chrome books and having the opportunity to write on their tablets would make it much easier. Some students successfully logged into classkick through the internet on their tablets and said it was much easier than working on their laptops. I am still working on exploring the program, but, personally, the only challenge I came across was that since the kids were divided into six groups, some would get on and some would get off the program and I would have to take some time and look for the students that are on the program to check their works- they were scattered all over the list. 

Other than that, I really loved using the program and they informed me that they would love for me to make another slideshow for their math centers again. I think that if I could change some things about the program, I would come up with a more effective way to alert the teacher when the student presses "please check", and I would love to have the students who are working on the program to show up in one place and the students who aren't to be moved somewhere else, yet still visible. Overall, I really enjoyed working with the program! I took some pictures, but I was told I could only use them for classroom purposes, but i will gladly show them to You in person.

More blog posts to come.  Follow #214EdPrep and @EGCollabLab for more!

Students Giving Teachers Feedback

By Mark Heintz

Elk Grove High School teachers have engaged in peer observation groups (POGs) for the past seven years.  Being a part of a POG has been invaluable and one of the most influential forces behind my teaching.  For most of that time, the groups have tried a variety of ways to get students involved in the process.  In December, I wanted to expand that effort to directly asking students for feedback on some of the changes I implemented throughout November and December.  I wanted one lesson to be a common talking point for everyone.  To guide this process, Rachel Barry came into my class to observe a lesson.  Later in the day, she facilitated a discussion, in the Collab Lab, with the three students from the class and me.*

The process was amazing! I sat and wrote as much of what they were saying as quickly as I could.  I tried not to talk and allow them to give feedback on my teaching.  Rachel asked the students guiding questions.  She was instrumental in serving as a neutral, non-judgemental facilitator.  One of the key takeaways was to go slower.  Sometimes I will use four or five documents and the class is confused on the first one.  I tend to cram more into a lesson, because more always feels better in an AP class when time is scarce.  After the discussion, I modified the lesson for the next day with the focus narrowed and only used two documents.  

At the end of the next day's lesson, the three students noticed the change and were grateful that their feedback was used.   I have used the student feedback of less is more as a mantra as a I continue to plan out the rest of the year. Two of the students did a write up that I think was worth sharing and hopefully will inspire you to do something similar.  

Student #1

Anyways, in general I'd say my experience with our little get together was positive. Being able to converse with you and Ms. Barry in a smaller environment allowed me to talk more and say things I most likely wouldn't have shared in our normal classroom setting. For other more shy students this would absolutely be a great opportunity to get feedback from people you normally wouldn't. Plus on your end I would bet it is nice to see how people are understanding your lessons and if they are able to not only apply the information we were taught, but talk about it and the bigger picture. And I also liked how you asked us how you can be a better teacher and how we might learn this information better. That is something that shows us students our teachers care about our education. Though to be honest some students may feel intimidated by how it was just like 5 people in a room, but I don't think this will be much of a problem for our class at least. Anyways, hopefully you got something out this email and I'll be seeing your tomorrow

Student #2

My experience in the collab lab with Mr.Heintz and Ms.Barry was good. Were were allowed to express our feelings about AP. It was one of the very few opportunities we were allowed to speak for the whole class and ourselves. We all said the good and bad things about the lesson. What I liked about the whole experience was Mr. Heintz was open minded to our suggestions about how he could make the lessons in class easier for us so we can understand the content and how to write better without getting confused. The next day Mr.Heintz took our suggestions and the lesson was a lot better, and even some of my friends said "that lesson today wasn't that bad" "I think i finally learned something." I think Mr.Heintz and Ms.Barry shouldn't only ask us, but ask the whole class about suggestions and how they can implement that into a lesson.

*The students were selected based off their availability during the day.    

Positivity on Twitter

By Mark Heintz

As part of the new year, I made a resolution to share my classroom on Twitter this year. I feel one of the roles of a teacher is to communicate with the community that they serve. Over the past two weeks, I have tried to tweet at least once every day about the nature of the lesson or progress towards a goal.

The first positive result of my efforts to tweet has been connecting with other teachers and getting new ideas.  A few weeks ago, our school Periscoped a few classrooms to share a live feed of daily classroom learning.  You can read about that here.   I received some feedback on the lesson and changed my plan the next day to incorporate their ideas about including argument towers to improve student writing.  I thanked them for the suggestion on Twitter. It was great to get new ideas and share the results!

Another positive result has been feedback from parents and guardians. I have a few parents/guardians who actively follow me on Twitter and one tweeted at me:

It was a positive affirmation of my efforts to share what was happening in the classroom.

Finally, the first few days of the new year, the pictures in my tweets largely came from my first period class. A student in my second hour said I was unfairly biased towards my first period. He was right, so I now engage with all of my classes throughout the day. The students are interested in what I share and how I share it. They are turning into historians!

It has been a great start, and I can't wait to see future outcomes!

Collaboration and Professional Learning Between Districts

By Anna Izzo

Earlier this year I attended the annual Midwest AATI (American Association of Teachers of Italian) conference at Ridgewood High School in Norridge.  Italian teachers aren’t too common, so after five years I’ve gotten to know just about everyone in the area.  This year, however, I met Allyson Feierberg who started the Italian program on her own at Glenbard North two years ago.  While she was born in Chicago, her mom grew up in Milan and spoke solely Italian at home.  We immediately clicked at the conference; we had a lot in common and had a blast discussing our favorite Italianisms.  We kept in touch as the year went on through email and text asking each other’s advice on a lesson or sharing new materials.  We met after school at Elios Pizzeria in Addison several times for some authentic pizza Napolitana- sacrifices, right?

Last Friday Glenbard North had an institute day, so we wrote up a brief itinerary of what we’d like to accomplish for a professional day.  Both schools fully supported our collaboration despite different districts.  Finding relatable materials and new resources is half the battle, and I’ve always struggled being a one-person team at EG. 

Next year will be Allyson’s first year teaching Italian 3, so we decided to start our day working on that curriculum.  I encouraged her to incorporate a Pinocchio unit, which we then created reading guides for the first four chapters.  I have found making the time for a reader or two, such as Pinocchio, has helped students piece together the foundation of the language they have been learning the past couple years, and allows them to see everything in context.  Typically after Pinocchio, I can really see how well the students can comprehend and use the language up to this point in their studies.

The rest of the day at Glenbard was spent finding and even writing reading samples with comprehension questions, and searching for new listening practice.  We also shared some cultural activities we had both made.  Both Allyson and I were so relieved to have had an entire day to collaborate with someone and to accomplish so much. 

Too many questions...

By Mark Heintz

I have been asking a few questions lately.  Do we believe all students can learn the course objectives? Many people and myself included respond to that question, if the students are placed correctly.  So my next question is, if all students are placed correctly shouldn't they all get an A's? If we want all students to know our content and master our skills, then shouldn't all students get A's? Can a student pass my class if they don't know ALL the content and master ALL the skills?

Do students only not get A's because they are lazy or improperly placed?  Is it a problem if all students get an A? Have I set up my course so only hard workers or the incredibly bright get A's?

How does a student progress at a normal rate? What is a normal rate?  If you don’t know the normal pacing at a standard, then if you inflate grades to move along a student, then is it a disservice to the students? Does the grade become what I do or what the student can do?  Then, what does a grade represent? Should grades exist? Or should we just report on the standard?

If you feel like you just want to back out of these line of questioning, here is an entertaining video for you.

Teaching Purpose & Audience in AP Language

By: Kim Miklusak & Rachel Barry

This blog is written by both Kim (who was observed) and Rachel (who observed Kim) in an AP Language class.  Students have just read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and supporting nonfiction written/visual texts and are practicing rhetorical analysis focusing on audience and purpose.  The focus of this specific lesson was for students to demonstrate understanding of how to use strategies to convince an audience of a clear purpose.  Students were to write a letter to a designated audience from a designated perspective regarding whether or not The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be banned from schools.

To begin, students selected a partner.  One partner was asked to raise a finger of 1 or 2.  This randomly determined which purpose they were arguing for in their paper: 1) ban the book or 2) do not ban the book.  Then students raised another number of 1, 2, or 3 fingers.  They then found out their audience based on 1) those who want the book banned, 2) those who are against banning the book or 3) those who are indifferent.

Students worked in pairs to brainstorm what strategies would best convince their audience of their purpose (for example, emotion, logic, specific examples, metaphors, etc.).  They then wrote a letter to their assigned audience.  Finally, the students anonymously swapped letters and provided clear feedback on what strategies they saw the authors using and what worked/didn't work from their assigned perspective.  Students will then use this to reflect upon their own rhetorical analysis essays in class tomorrow as they work to revise.

Rachel's Reflection: As a math teacher, I am always amazed at how teachers bring controversial issues to light without creating arguments in class.  I am both intimidated by and excited at the thought of having discussions with students on topics of race, gender inequality, sexuality, etc. due to the various perspectives and knowledge of students.  Also, people may be ill-informed or not informed enough on some topics, which could potentially lead to building warped opinions.  Through this observation, I learned how Kim is using the controversial issue of book banning to open students' eyes to multiple sides of an argument.  This activity taught students the importance of gaining pertinent information to support their claim.  Since students were not able to choose their side, some may have even written from a perspective different from their own, which I think is a significantly valuable lesson.  Because of this activity, her class will eventually be able to discuss social issues that are more pertinent to today and her students in an objective manner.  This was truly eye-opening.  I would've loved to have been in this class in high school! 

Shifting the Focus of Class: which skills do we teach to which students?

By Kim Miklusak

Last year I read this blog post by Kylene Beers.  I definitely recommend taking a moment to read and reflect upon it.  In it she highlights the difference between "who is taught what?"--that is, what reading skills do we teach to "struggling" vs. "highly skilled" readers.  Not surprisingly, most teachers report that they focus on paraphrasing and comprehension with "struggling readers," yet author's purpose and logical inferences with "highly skilled readers."  While she specifically focuses on the term "readers," I believe the skill difference she highlights crosses subject areas.  See the two charts here.

I've been reflecting upon this difference in my own English class this year as we continue to revise our curriculum at the regular and AP levels and as we have interdisciplinary conversations in our school.  Our "struggling readers" are those who would thrive on these higher level conversations.  Too often (and I am grossly overgeneralizing here--obviously not everyone is like this) we bemoan the completion rate of tasks and passing rate at the regular level.  Students are bored--of course they are!  We have heard on Twitter and elsewhere, "Would you want to be a student in your own class?"  Would we be motivated to read if we focused only on vocabulary and paraphrasing?  Even we as teachers have "more fun" in our engaging classes.

How then do we have struggling readers complete the comprehension portion of activities, so they are able to move on to the higher level skills and the engaging activities?  One way I am trying to work on that this year is by moving toward a system that I discussed at length with Mark Heintz in our history department and have seen Linda Ashida do in her Spanish classes: make the comprehension a requirement instead of a grade.

Students cannot participate in the higher level portion until they complete the foundational activities.  First we must ask ourselves: are the tasks I am having students do required to help them understand the text?  Do they practice skills that we could practice in other ways?  Or are they filler?  Instead have the bulk of class time be the engaging portion, and more students will want to do the activities to move along. 

Easier said then done, perhaps. Foremost, it is easier in a less linear course like English, History, or foreign language.  Next this requires giving up some control in your class: large group work and discussions are easy for the teacher, and they are easy for the student.  But do we know where each student is in terms of skills and content?  Shifting more easily between required work, large group work, and individual work allows teachers more flexibility in shifting the learning into the students' hands.  In a large group there are students who are not participating; those same students may not be following along in small and individual work, but in this case we know who they are, where they are, and we can remediate to help move them along.  And, ideally, the motivation is beyond the grade to move more students forward.

I will post more again another time on the actual practice of this once we are moving through our next full unit, and I will provide screen shots and student samples to let you know how it's going!  Right now it's slightly more theory than practice!

Guest Post: Adding Value to People

By Joe Bush

In February of 2015, I was fortunate enough to attend the John Maxwell Team Leadership Certification Program.  It was the best professional development I ever experienced, and the knowledge I learned from that conference fundamentally altered they way in which I teach.  The most important pieces of information that I took away from the three-day conference are as follows: 1. The best leaders are those who have the greatest influence, 2. Leaders need to serve, 3. Leaders need to add value to people and 4. Expectations drive beliefs and beliefs drive behavior.

As a teacher, I have always considered myself a leader. However, for much of my career, I was a positional leader.  A positional leader is someone who leads because someone else gave them a position.  An example might be an NFL head coach who was handpicked by the owner, but is unable to influence the players.  That type of teacher rarely has success in the classroom because they use their position to hold it over students.  After hearing John Maxwell (The Number One Leadership Guru in the World) speak, I began to think differently about teaching.  If I were going to truly change the minds and hearts of students and educate them they way that I saw fit, I was going to need to serve them.  The second part was adding value to the lives of the students. 

I would like to explain more on the notion of serving others and adding value through an example.  This year I was blessed with the opportunity to teach a leadership through service course.  What I quickly realized was that my students had great ideas, were already influential in their own circles and they all loved to serve.  After hearing Maxwell speak I realized that instead of pushing my own leadership agenda at the beginning of the year I should have focused on helping each student become more influential using their own strengths.  For some it may have been through public speaking, others it was through organization and still others just needed encouragement.  After coming back from the conference, I quickly changed my agenda in time to help the students succeed in our St. Baldrick’s charity drive.  As I incorporated Maxwell’s ideas, I could quickly see how the students grew in an explosive fashion.  I helped my students enhance what they already did well. 

The final piece to the puzzle was the idea that expectations drive belief and belief drives behavior. Motivational speaker and entrepreneur Paul Martinelli talked about how he overcame stuttering and the fact that he was a high school dropout to build several million-dollar businesses.  Paul said that belief drives behavior.  Therefore, if we think we are stupid, our behaviors are stupid.  However, because expectations drive beliefs, as a teacher it is our job to set expectations for our students to live up to.   When we set those expectations, hold students accountable and provide supports to assist them, students achieve more.

What I found to be the best part of the Maxwell training was the fact that serving and adding value to others is something that can be done regardless of your position. Maxwell says, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.”  This is true because leadership is influence.  So, regardless of your position, you can always strive to be more influential, thus becoming a better leader.   Going forward, I will strive to add value to my students right from the start.  Each year will be different based on the different needs of students, but the lessons learned from that conference will forever change the way I think, lead and teach. 

Student Feedback and Previewing

By Mark Heintz

The 2014-2015 school year focused on literacy and building background knowledge before learning.  In the past few weeks, I allocated considerable amount of class time dedicated to pre-reading.  The objective of the lesson was stated and the skills I hoped they acquire.

To start the lesson, I created a fact cube with words from the up coming reading.  I cut the nine squares and put the students into pairs.  I gave the students seven minutes to attempt the cube.  It was great to see them piece the puzzle together.  The students were so engaged! The students struggled, but I was able to guide them without telling them the answers.  When the students finished, they left the cube on their desks so they would have access to the definitions while reading.

Next, I had the students pick two of the words and predict what the reading will be about.  Here are two examples.  

It was so powerful!  The students received positive praise for their efforts.  When I picked these two students to display their work over AppleTV, they were taken aback by how right they were and the praise I gave them and their fellow students.  

The best part was there wasn't a wrong answer in this process.  The examples above show how students were able to predict what the reading was about.  Even if a student was wrong in their prediction, they were connecting the words and thinking in the process! The reading was short but dense.  As they read, they so much to fall back on because their learning had been activated and received feedback on their understandings of the definitions and predictions.  

Balancing New Ideas

By Kim Miklusak

This week we had a series of pull-out meeting times in our school and district as noted in the various blog posts and tweets: Honors/AP English Drive Down, Lead Learners, District Instructional Technology, AP junior teachers, etc..  It is incredible that our district supports professional development and teacher collaboration in so many ways.

One of the things that always gets to me after these meetings and something I hear from my co-workers, however, is how we come across a million new ideas that we want to try out RIGHT NOW.  Or, we look back to the previous school year and think, Why didn't I do that!  It's inspiring and energizing to think this way, but it can also be tiring--especially in the middle of the year--so I write down notes and lists of things to work on over the summer. 

Sometimes I think we overwhelm ourselves with trying new things whether that be an instructional strategy or a new technology piece.  We have to remind ourselves and accept that it's OK to take things one step at a time, to try things out one at a time, to learn things as we go, or even to let someone else try things out and let us know how it goes, so we can maybe incorporate or adapt them into our curriculum later.  We don't have to try every new thing all the time.  We can thoughtfully take it as we go, always with the goal in mind of enhancing our own professional development and instructional strategies to meet the needs of our students.

Lesson Sharing & School Culture

By Kim Miklusak

One of the things I like most about the school culture at EG is our willingness to share lesson ideas and instructional techniques with each other.  I've done two lessons this week that were introduced to me by my peers.

The first was a QR code pre-reading activity that was originally done at our Freshman First Days event at the start of the school year.  I then observed Bonnie Kale use it with her freshmen as a preview to reading Shakepeare; it was so well received by her students that other members of her freshmen team started using it as well!  Many members of our American Literature team are now using that idea this week to preview the concept of race and conflicts surrounding race in the US today as we begin preparing to read Huck Finn.  What was great about this activity was that it was self-paced but still skills-centered and incorporated current events and conflicts via articles and videos.

The second idea is the gamification of grammar practice, an idea long championed by Rita Sayre.  Today I did brackets to make a head-to-head competition.  Students worked by themselves or with a peer.  Each English grammar passage was a round.  The students put the number of correct answers plus an answer explanation as a tie breaker.  Even if they were kicked out in the first round they kept playing because the team with the next highest total came back in for the final round!  The students really got into it--even students who normally wouldn't be as interested in grammar.  Another great way to do this would be through Kahoot!

Lesson reflection: determining relevant vs. best evidence

Today the CollabLab welcomes Alexa Rodheim, an English teacher at Elk Grove HS. She can be reached @AlexaRodheim

One of the biggest challenges English teachers face is how to help students improve their ability to analyze evidence in argumentative writing. We are constantly asking them to answer the questions “So what?” and “Why is this important?” rather than simply summarize the examples or data they have chosen to support their arguments. With this in mind, what I have begun to realize is that many students, especially freshmen, struggle with this skill— not because they lack the ability to explain or “dig deeper,” but because they often choose only relevant (and sometimes even irrelevant) evidence rather than the best evidence. In other words, we can only ask students to write strong analysis if we first ask them and show them how to incorporate strong evidence.

Sixth period Peer Observation Group members visited my double-period WOC/prep reading classes in October to observe a lesson in which I attempted to do just this. Prior to the lesson, my students and I discussed the difference between relevant evidence and best evidence, and I modeled examples from a non-fiction article that presented two sides of current, controversial issues in Upfront magazine. Next, I had my students rotate through stations in which they skimmed additional articles from the magazine, looked at the pictures and captions, and ultimately chose one based on interest. They then independently read and annotated their articles and derived two main ideas (arguments).  For each main idea, they chose three pieces of supporting evidence from the article and completed a graphic organizer.

For the observed lesson students worked in small groups with peers who had chosen the same articles. Their objectives were to compare the three pieces of evidence they had each chosen for each main idea and compile their “top three” pieces of best evidence.  I asked them to record these choices, along with explanations for each, in a new graphic organizer. I also made the last minute decision to have students record their conversations on Notability using the audio note feature. I had been inspired by a lesson I observed in Kim Miklusak’s classroom a few weeks prior. Each group was required to send their recordings along with their completed organizers to me at the end. From there, they would be asked to evaluate both main ideas along with their corresponding best evidence and choose an argument for which they would independently write a MEL-Con paragraph.

From my perspective, one strategy that worked well was allowing student choice with the articles; it led to engagement in subsequent parts of the lesson. I also felt that the scaffolding for the lesson was appropriate: modeling, guided practice, independent work, group work, and back to independent work with built-in checkpoints with the whole group along the way. For example, Kim Miklusak and Linda Ashida both commented on the effectiveness of my pausing the lesson to remind students of prior knowledge and activities to prompt them for their next steps. Linda also noted that there was an effective blend of tech and non-tech, which allowed students to simultaneously view and synthesize pieces of information with ease. Students, despite their varying learning and behavior profiles, also had mostly positive interactions throughout the activity. Katie Owen noted that most groups she observed were respectful to one another, despite the sensitive topics in some of these articles, and that they made sure to move through the steps together.

One challenge I experienced with this lesson was the misconception of some students that the activity required them to debate sides of the argument rather than best evidence. Even with the clear expectations I set at the beginning of the lesson, some students persisted with these discussions, which steered them away from the true purpose. By the end, through redirection from me and even prompting from their peers, most were able to get on track. Another challenge during this lesson was how to go about using the audio note recordings. Both Rachel Barry and Mark Heintz inquired about how I would use the recordings, and I realized I didn’t have a solid plan. Going into the lesson, I thought of it as a classroom management tool for keeping students on-task and accountable; on the other hand, the recordings had potential to inspire students for their analysis in their paragraphs. For this lesson, it became a bit of a wash, but for future lessons I plan to experiment with more effective uses for this feature and to seek ideas from colleagues.

Overall, I appreciated the opportunity to invite my peers into my classroom and receive valuable feedback. I am excited to continue finding new ways to help students improve argumentative writing.