A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Introduction to Strength and Condition-Students

By Daisy Crus and Jaina Pfister

This is part of a blog series intended to document and define learning at Elk Grove High School throughout the 2018-2019 school year in order to increase student learning, give professionals autonomy, increase trust in our learning community, and foster a sense of personal-intellectual collegiality within the building across departments.  You can read all of the previous posts here.

In this post, two freshmen students reflect on what they learned in the first few weeks in Introduction to Strength and Condition.  You can read the teacher's reflection here.  The students are in control of their learning in this class. Here is a quick video the students talking about what they want in the course and how best to hold each other to those expectations.

Daisy Cruz

What did you learn in this lesson?

Something I learned in this lesson is that if you put your mind to what you are doing and you stay focused, you will always work through it till it’s complete. I also learned that when you are working out you always want to work on three things.  Those are strength, auxiliary and core.  Working with those three things will complete your daily workout. One thing I learned in this lesson is that you have to work on both parts of your body to not have one small leg and the other a lot muscular.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

Something I would like to learn in the next lesson is how to make the exercise more challenging if we feel it’s not pushing us to work harder. The teachers make us work hard and they are great but some people have already been in sports or activities and done harder workouts. They should have a specific workout and have it in two different ways, the normal way and the experienced way.

Jaina Pfister 

What did you learn in this lesson?

Today we learned about box jumps and step-ups with the boxes. It was mostly a learning day but days like those are a crucial step when it comes to working out. Learning the correct form will ensure we won’t get hurt and teaches us to become better athletes.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

For next time I hope we can incorporate the boxes in our workout so we can use the knowledge we learned. An important part of learning to me is being able to practice our learnings and continue to grow from there.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Introduction to Strength and Condition-Teachers

By Anthony Furman and Mark Heintz

This is part of a blog series intended to document and define learning at Elk Grove High School throughout the 2018-2019 school year in order to increase student learning, give professionals autonomy, increase trust in our learning community, and foster a sense of personal-intellectual collegiality within the building across departments.  You can read all of the previous posts here. 

Going into a physical education class conjures up a lot of memories.  I personally always had great experiences but from movies, tv, and friends it seems that p.e. was great for everyone.  The class has been under fire across our country and most recently our state.  But going into Anthony Furman's 844 class highlights what p.e. should be.  Students owned the class.  They created the expectations and they did the work.  I'm in awe of what he was able to do in the first few weeks of school.

What did learning look like in the lesson? 

Furman: In this lesson, the “learning” focus was two-fold.  First, we completed our class culture expectations to work by.  This taught the students to genuinely think about what kind of environment they want to create and work within on a daily basis.  It is the beginning of understanding how to create a “culture” that will aim at improving the internal and external vision of what we expect from ourselves, our class and then throughout our school.  Students were given the opportunity to share expectations that were felt as important to have in class.  The list of I WILL, WE WILL and WE WILL NOT statements all came from the four sections of 844 students.

The exercises learned on this day were box jumps and variations of step-ups.  We have a template of exercises that we want our students to learn during their freshman year that will not only prepare themselves for future P.E. classes but also building a basic foundation of exercises for students to understand and build upon.  They learned the basic technique and purpose of each exercise and then were given time to practice each within small groups.  These exercises will be combined with other learned strength, core, and auxiliary exercises as we continue to learn our intro to a strength program.

What do you hope to do for the next time? 

Furman: I will be looking to see that we are practicing our “Building a Culture to be Proud Of” statements. That will come from teacher to student as well as student to student.  Exercises learned will be practiced and then given was to be made more challenging.  Ideally, we begin to build an atmosphere where class expectations are maintained by all students and we continue to build on the program focuses set each week.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Dual Credit College Composition-Students

By Madison Reed, Jake Mizialko, Alexandra Glinski and Mark Heintz

Emily Mikuzis reflected on learning in a previous post, but what do the students think? A group of teachers and students explore what learning is. From the students perspective, for deep learning to occur, they've got to be interested in it.  They have to find meaning to them.  Here are just a few highlights before you read:

• This story’s argument really made me think about how much meaning I give things in my life and my perspective. 

• I love the freedom of ideas and creativity it allows us as students to have most times.

• I hope that students will be able to branch off of those three things and be able to incorporate it into their own writing.

• I would hope to find a style of writing/narrative the best suits me.

Madison

What did you learn in this lesson?

In this lesson, I learned about narratives and arguments from a deeper perspective. We read a passage called ‘This is Water’ by David Foster Wallace. The story touched pretty heavily on the ideas of “you control the meanings on everything in the world” and “you control your own perspective and decide how much meaning everything gets”. The whole class was split into groups. After listening to this piece and annotating things we found important in the text, everyone in each group shared a sentence, phrase and word from the reading that we thought was important and at the end, the whole class discussed thoughts on the reading as a whole. This story’s argument really made me think about how much meaning I give things in my life and my perspective. I enjoyed this narrative a lot and I loved the message/argument it brought with it.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

I hope to learn more about the other types of writings that are out there. Writing is one of my favorite things to do in school. I love the freedom of ideas and creativity it allows us as students to have most times. Also, I hope to learn how to better my writing abilities. So far in my senior year here at EGHS, College Composition has been one of my favorite classes and generally my favorite English class I've taken.

Jake
What did you learn in this lesson?

During this lesson, we, as a class, learned how to fully understand a story by highlighting significant words, phrases, and sentences. These three things helped us figure out what the narrative, argument, and effect were on the reader. This way of annotating shows that students are able to concisely get to the point while still annotating and understanding the story completely. This was a unique lesson because once the student finished reading on their own they were able to talk to their group members to hear what they took out of the story and how they perceived it.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

For the next lesson, I hope to learn how you can you words, phrases, and sentences to help you learn more about the message that the author was trying to get across to his readers. I hope that students will be able to branch off of those three things and be able to incorporate it into their own writing. By practicing this task, this will allow students to strengthen their writing abilities and easily identify key parts of a story.

Alexandra
What did you learn in this lesson?

In this lesson, I learned how different narratives can be used to make an argument. We listened and read through a couple of texts which all had addressed an argument, but all using different narratives. Individually, we would complete a reading guide where we, the students, had to annotate for a sentence, a phrase, and one keyword from the text that we believed was important. By identifying these different things, we are able to identify what the argument of the text was and how effective the narrative was. While repeating this process a few times, I learned how narrative is a key figure to an essay and how a good narrative will help your argument, which together can create a successful piece of writing.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

In the next lesson, I would hope to find a style of writing/narrative the best suits me. Trying and testing different essay structures will be a big part of finding out what I like. I want to be able to write an effective essay that not only has a good narrative but also gets my argument across. Hopefully, in our next few writing assignments, my best style of writing will become more clear to me.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Dual Credit College Composition-Teachers

By Emily Mikuzis and Mark Heintz

In the continued effort of defining learning at Elk Grove, Emily Mikuzis graciously invited me into her class and reflected on the learning in her dual credit College Composition class.

From my point of view, students were finding their voice.  Not an easy thing to do.  But in this case, students had agency: they wanted to know how to express their opinions in their voice. Why shouldn't they?  They were finding their voice. In her reflection, Emily told me that last year, almost all of her students' first paper sounded the same. It didn't matter the student's experience, the voice was the same.  She thought back on why this happened. She was guiding them too much, created an environment that favored writing was easy and offered little opportunity to truly express themselves.  This year, her goal is to change that. She wants to empower her students and at the beginning of the year, to find their voice in writing.

I'm very jealous of her students as they get to explore who they are and how best to express themselves.  We would all be lucky to have that opportunity.  Right now, learning looks like a personal journey and struggle towards what is meaningful to each student and how best to express it.

What did learning look like in the lesson? 

Emily: This semester, I am exploring ways to allow students to have greater confidence in their writing by increasing their investment and creating opportunities for student choice. 

In this lesson, students worked collaboratively to identify how narrative and argument, which are typically taught separately, can be used together to create an effective piece of writing. 

Students individually identified the story and argument present in a selection from Persepolis. I wanted students to begin to see that stories - even brief ones, can support a powerful argument. In this step, student learning looks like quiet reflection - low-risk exposure to a new topic. 

Next, students read and annotated a part of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College. While they annotated, they watched this corresponding video clip: "This Is Water." Students annotated for keywords, phrases, and sentences. In this step, student learning looked like gathering information to share with their group. Learning looked like reading to understand. 

Finally, students worked through a text rendering protocol with peers. Students shared a single word, phrase, and sentence without commentary in order to identify the big picture meaning of the text. In this step, learning looked like working together to piece together and refine understanding of a text. 

Student learning culminated in identifying the narrative elements and argument present in the piece. From there, they can compare the structure to two texts which incorporate the same elements but have different purposes and structures. David Sedaris’s essay “Jesus Shaves” and a story from The Moth, "Whatever Doesn't Kill Me."

What do you hope to do for the next time? 

Emily: Through the comparison of three engaging texts with very different structures and purposes, I hope to give students options for attacking their first writing assignment, Narrative as Argument. My hope is that students will begin to build confidence to make their own stylistic and structural choices in writing assignments. I hope to, throughout the semester, continue to create opportunities for students to work together to build understanding and hopefully begin to develop their own writer's voice through greater investment in our writing tasks.


You can read last week's post on learning here. 

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Intro to Engineering Part 1-Students

By Alexander Danan, Margi Patel, Ryan Libiano and Mark Heintz

Patrick McGing and I gave our insight into what learning looked like in Patrick's Intro to Engineering class. But what do the students think?  What do they want the class to be? If the focus of a school is meant to be on the learning, especially student learning, shouldn't we spend time getting their feedback?

A group of teachers met with me last May and agreed on a common mission and vision.  Part of that vision included partnering with students in an effort to document and define learning at Elk Grove.  Each week, as a teacher and I share our thoughts on learning, students who are in the teachers class I visit will do the same.  This week, three students in Patrick's class shared their thoughts on the first days of school. Here is what they had to say.

Ryan

What did you learn in this lesson?

Although we did not yet dive too deep into the engineering process or have started any projects, I found the class still to be engaging in the sense that we were able to reflect upon how we do now and how we will do in the future (as in our future work life etc). Certain topics such as skills and interests seemed to have no meaning in the basics of the design process or literally anything that relates to engineering, but I finally realized that these topics would soon help me become aware of what strengths I have and fields they were applicable in. Furthermore, the class will teach me how to write a resume and prepare myself for future endeavors throughout my adult life.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

Although we did not cover any engineering related topic in this lesson, I am still very excited to learn more about how to write a resume and cover letter and prepare myself for the future. Along with that, I am still very excited to dive deep into the engineering process and design my first object/thing (I don’t know what it is yet). Another huge hope is to finally use machinery such as the shopbot, CNC mill, Laser cutter, etc.

Margi

What did you learn in this lesson?

It's only been a few days so we haven't really started yet. I found some things interesting such as how to operate the machines and how to write the resume. We are going to start a project very soon so I'm really excited to find out how to do the designs and stuff. We also learned the things that we are going do it throughout the semester and I found most of the things very interesting.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

I hope to learn how to use the 3D printer and the new technology. By end of the semester, I would love to know what I should put it in my resume and cover letter. I'm a senior and I'm glad I took this class because I'm sure it's going to help figure what I want to do after high school in specifically engineering. I'm excited to learn more about the topics that we talked about. I'm also excited to see what interests me the most.

Alex

What did you learn in this lesson?

During the class I learned what our class is going to be and some of the things that we will be using in for the future. One of the things that stuck out to me was learning how to make a resume. Since I'm only 14 and don't know anything about resumes or jobs, this was a nice piece of information that will be able to help me throughout life since people need jobs to make money and live. Another thing was knowing that we will be able to use a lot of cool tech that I've never even touched before.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

What I'm interested in is going through the design process to create some different but amazing things. I also want to learn more about how to use all the machines to make 2D into 3D.  One of the biggest things that I hope I learn next time or later in the year is all the small things that I'm able to do while designing program so I can make what I've already made and make it better to the best of my potential.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Intro to Engineering Part 1-Teachers

By Patrick McGing and Mark Heintz

This is the first of hopefully, fingers crossed, a weekly series of teachers and students at Elk Grove reflecting on what meaningful learning looks like in practice.  A group of teachers all met with me in May of last year and we agreed on a common mission and vision for the 2018-2019 school year.

OUR MISSION

To document and define learning at Elk Grove High School throughout the 2018-2019 school year in order to increase student learning, give professionals autonomy, increase trust in our learning community, and foster a sense of personal-intellectual collegiality within the building across departments.

OUR VISION

• Connect teachers across all disciplines in the building in a quarterly meeting
• Weekly class visits and sharing video segments with the larger community of the learning taking place.  
• Involve the PTC by sharing the narrative of learning at Elk Grove and inviting them to possible future meetings with staff and students 
• Document and share a weekly blog post that involves student and teachers 

Throughout the year, we are guided by the following questions

• How do we define learning?
• What conditions maximize student learning? 
• How do we build trust with one another to increase professional autonomy and increase transparency? 
• How do we share our narrative of learning with the larger community and stakeholders?

In this first post, Patrick McGing graciously "volunteered" to be first.  Patrick is just awesome.  Ever since he stepped foot in the building, he's been asking the right questions and is focused on learning instead of teaching.  He's in the trenches with his students, figuring things out alongside them.  He's ever reflective and constantly making changes to his already amazing classes. 

The Career Technical Education department continues to be cutting edge.  Seriously, it's an amazing place to be and I'm grateful every time I'm down there. I think the school placed most of the CTE classes away from the rest of the "core" classes so we wouldn't be as jealous.  Everyone in that department is so progressive and I'm blown away when I go down there.  But as this post is focusing on Patrick, his focus continues to be on the learning. Every time I connect with him, I wish I could be as focused on learning as he is.  

What did learning look like in the lesson? 

McGing: For this lesson, students filled out a questionnaire asking about what their interests are, activities/sports they participate in, employment history, volunteering experiences, skills they have obtained from previous courses/extracurriculars, awards/achievements, words/phrases that describe them, and goals for the year. I wanted this to be an opportunity for me to get to know students better, but more importantly for students to reflect and document themselves. Little did students know, this was going to lead to the development of a cover letter and resume.

Therefore, learning looked like reflection and basic goal setting.

Learning looked liked seeing how small reflections and goal setting applies in the larger picture of District 214 goals and their own future goals.

Learning looked like how starting small and documenting where students begin will, in the end, help document personal growth.

What do you hope to do for the next time? 

McGing: At Elk Grove, the majority of teachers, including myself in Technology Education adopted Standards Based Grading as the majority of the learning in our classrooms revolves around learning and developing essential skills (“Standards”). These essential skills sometimes get lost in “day to day school.” Therefore, part of my reasoning for having students create a resume and document their skills is so they know where they are starting the year off. As we continue the school year and cover more essential skills I would like to have students add to their resume; along with anything else that applies from school, extracurriculars, or other.

Students can then begin to see growth, even if they started with a very bare resume, personal growth will be documented.

On top of this, as one of District 214’s goals is career ready and we fall in a Career and Technical Educational course, developing resume building skills will further help students as they begin looking for careers that require the same skills they have developed in their CTE courses and others.

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!

Making Pre-Test Review Interactive and Cooperative

Written by Quinn Loch

A couple weeks ago I was inspired by a review activity that AP environmental science (APES) students did at Prospect High School. In the activity, students were split into groups and assigned a topic in which they had to visually represent the most important concepts, diagrams, and terms within their topic. Students used neon-colored wet-erase markers on the black science lab tables and had great results. A lab table one day, and a make-shift "whiteboard" table the next. Time to get some markers!

Neon wet-erase markers on science lab tables.

I decided to try my own spin on it and have groups of students rotate around the room answering one of six questions for one of six topics. After six rounds, each group will have answered one question per topic. I used big pieces of butcher paper for this unit - going to give wet-erase markers a try the next time.

This jigsaw strategy is nothing new, however technology can lend a hand in making the end products accessible for students outside of class. After each poster's topic was finished, one student from the group took a picture and uploaded it to a Schoology Media Album. This media album provided another resource for my students before their first big test.

Our Unit 1 Review Media Album

I asked my APES students at the end of the jigsaw activity if they liked it and I got an overwhelming "Yes." I told them that I had seen this done another way, where each group was in charge of single topic and on student responded, "Oh yeah, that'd be cool too"!

My goal is to pool these resources both on paper and on schoology throughout the year, so that when the AP review starts in April, we'll have lots of resources to draw from.

Why Do We Give Homework?

by Kirsten Fletcher

As a project for the District 214 Mentor Program, I recently sent out a survey to my school to find out what teachers really think about homework. The process alone of writing this survey was an educational one. I had the chance to collaborate with Rebecca Castro, a colleague at Wheeling who was doing a similar project. I also got feedback from several peers and administrators before sending out the questions. Their comments and corrections were incredibly helpful as I approached this touchy subject.

My goal in conducting this survey was to see if there was a general consensus about homework in our building. The following are some of the questions I asked:

• What is the main purpose of your homework?
• What type of homework do you usually give?
• What percentage does homework occupy in your overall grade?
• How often do you give homework?
• How much time should it take students to complete your homework?
• What percentage actually complete it on time?
• Why do you think some students do not complete homework?
• What are the consequences in your class for not completing homework?

As teachers, we all believe that what we do in the classroom is worthwhile and beneficial to learning. If not, we wouldn't be doing it. However, it seems that just within our building there is a wide range of perceptions about the benefits of homework. I received 78 responses from EGHS staff which were fairly evenly divided among divisions. Forty-eight percent of responses were from teachers of Honors or AP courses. Here are some of the results of my survey:

How long should it take students to complete your homework?

Most teachers reported that they offer students opportunities to earn credit for late work. When asked about the reason that most students do not complete homework, the most popular response was that our school culture makes it acceptable not to turn work in on time. Teachers also recognized that students' time constraints and lack of interest contribute to low completion rates. Some teachers (almost 20%) say that their colleagues assign too much homework and that this impacts students' ability to complete work for other classes.

The final question of the survey was an open-ended one. I wanted to know if teachers had any suggestions for improving the homework completion rate at our school. I was surprised at how many people took the time to give thoughtful responses. Some expressed frustration. Others talked about all the time commitments and other challenges that our students face outside of class. Many talked about the idea that students often don't do homework when they don't see the reason or purpose behind it. There seemed to be two major fields of thought. A significant group of teachers say that we need to assign credit (points) to homework and enforce strict deadlines in order for students to take it seriously. Another group of teachers say that homework must be clearly linked to assessments and that students will complete it (even without earning credit for it) if they see the purpose / value in it.

While this was only an informal survey, I hope that this exercise can be used to spark some meaningful discussions in the future about the purpose and relevance of homework to our students' learning. As I move into Summer, I am carefully reconsidering the role of homework in my own classes for the 2016-17 school year.

Brainstorming in the Digital World

by Kirsten Fletcher

The following is a brief overview of different ways to use technology to brainstorm with your students. Most of these ideas came out of collaboration with my wonderful district PLC. As always, a big thank you to Sara Kahle-Ruiz for sharing her discoveries.

Schoology: Discussions

• If Schoology is already your LMS, this is a great way to brainstorm. Students don't need to learn a new app or log in to a new site. 
• Simply click on "Add Material" and select the "Discussion" feature. Then you can create a discussion question and add images or links, if desired.
• Students can respond to ideas with praise or suggestions for improvement.
• The teacher can adjust the settings to either allow students to view all responses or mandate that they post an idea before they view other responses.
• There is also a "Like" feature so students can select their favorite idea.
• In this discussion, I had students find unique advertisements for food products in French. They posted a link or an image with a brief explanation. Then classmates commented on the ads.

Discussions allow students to post images, links, and text. They can "like" and respond to posts.

Schoology:  Media Albums

• Again, if you are already using Schoology, students will have easy access to this feature.
• Simply click on "Add Material" and select the "Media Album" feature. You can give your album a title and upload your own images.
• Items need to be in a student's camera roll in order to be uploaded from an iOS device.
• Since you can not set a due date on a media album, you may not want to hide this in a folder. It is easier if it is readily visible to students.
• In a media album, students can upload photos, infographics, and videos. 
• I often have students upload video projects (from Adobe Voice or iMove) to an album. Since the album is visible to the entire class, I then have them watch a few examples and ask follow-up questions of their classmates.
• In this example, I had students search for an image of what they believed to be the biggest global challenge. They gave their image a title. Then they maintained a conversation with a partner defending why their global challenge was the most significant. The media in this case was a springboard for conversation.

Media album allows students to post images. In the browser version, they can also comment on each others' posts.

Candor

• This site is great if you want to get all the ideas out before anyone has the chance to criticize. The leader controls the amount of time that participants can create "cards", or post ideas. He/She then closes the board and participants can vote on their favorite ideas. Here is a how-to video for Candor.
• I think this might work best for professional collaboration, or teams trying to collaborate from different locations and on different schedules. Once the board is closed, all participants receive an email with a list of proposed ideas to vote on.
• Participants will need to register for a free account with Candor before they can join the brainstorm.

Participants create "cards" with ideas for a project, etc. Then when brainstorming phase is over, others can vote or comment on their favorite ideas at candor.com

Dotstorming
This is by far my favorite because it combines images, captions, comments, and voting. Plus, it is web-based so it works on both tablets and computers!

How to get started:

• The teacher must create a free account, but students only need a link to participate. 
• Create a board by adding ideas, images, or uploading from Pinterest. 
• Invite participants by email or posting a link on your LMS. (Students do not need an account.) 
• Students can click a dot to vote on an idea or concept. They can also post pictures and comment on ideas.
• The teacher can lock the board in order to reclaim students' attention. The teacher can also rank ideas by votes and move ideas around to re-order them. 
• The comment feature allows students to practice writing with targeted vocabulary or grammar, justifying their choices. 
• This is similar to Schoology media albums, but students can see each others' comments and vote on their favorites.
• There is also a chat feature that the teacher can turn on or off.

You can duplicate any board to use it with different classes. It's good to keep a template because kids can edit the content.

Students can vote, add comments, or add their own images. You can also enable the chat feature.

Tips for Dotstorming:

• If accessing on an iPad, this works best in Puffin. 
• Create a template that you DON'T share. Then duplicate it for each class so they don't change your original. 

For more detailed information on how Sara Kahle-Ruiz at RMHS used Dotstorming to engage students in discussion and writing, check out this amazing blog post by Ann Syverson Bullis.

Devoting time to our own skills can benefit our students

by Kirsten Fletcher

As teachers, we have a tendency to devote all our energy to planning lessons, meeting with students, grading, etc. and not take time for our own professional growth.  For example, I teach French and I often feel like my language skills are slipping. I can no longer keep up the pace of a conversation the way I used to, and I just can't find the time to maintain the level I would like to have. Yet if I want my students to devote time to improving their language skills outside the classroom, I need to work on my own as well. The broader my vocabulary, the more likely I am to expose them to idiomatic expressions and advanced structures.

One way that I can work on my own skills and still encourage my students is through field trips. Every year, we offer students an opportunity to leave English (and technology) behind for a weekend and immerse themselves in French with Aventure Française. Students spend the weekend participating in trust walks, nature hikes, broom ball, tug-of-war, singing and skits... all while remaining in the target language! It is truly marvelous to observe.

214 students work together in French to accomplish a task

214 students use compasses, identify landmarks,
participate in trust walk in the woods while using French

Teachers refresh their skills as well

While it is always rewarding to see the progress that students make and the confidence they gain in such a short period of time, I also have a selfish reason for going. This weekend forces me to speak French as well. Even better, it gives me the opportunity to not be the expert in the room. I interact all weekend with my peers and I regain some of my fluency of expression. I return to the classroom energized and armed with new ideas.

The same can be said about honing our teaching skills. It is important to take time out to develop ourselves professionally. This may mean doing pull-out days with our PLC, participating in workshops, or attending conferences. While these experiences frequently mean extra work in the form of planning and sub plans, the payoff is worth it. For more reflection on the benefits of attending professional conferences, see this blog post by Kim Miklusak.













On a smaller scale, the Collab Lab at EGHS offers a variety of professional learning opportunities. Without having to get a sub or take time out for conferences, teachers can join our Teaming on Tuesdays workshops for one period (or even part of a period) to learn through observation and discussion with colleagues and students. Many teachers also just stop in to chat, get feedback, or exchange ideas.

In fact, stop by the Collab Lab during any period on a normal day and you can hear teachers challenging one another and having professional discussions about how our goals align to our assessments or how to best reach struggling students. I sometimes walk out overwhelmed, but more often I leave with new ideas that energize me and encourage me to improve my instruction. I acknowledge that it is hard to take time away from my ever-growing to-do list to engage in meaningful conversation about pedagogy - especially when I really just need to get things graded. However, I truly believe that devoting this time to improving myself and my instruction will benefit my students in the end.

Why Should We Attend Conferences?

By Kim Miklusak

I am thankful in our district that we have the opportunity to be reimbursed for most--if not all--of the cost of attending some conferences both locally and nationally.  At the end of November I had the opportunity to attend #NCTE15, the Annual Convention for the National Council of Teachers of English.  It was the first time I had attended this conference since I was in college!  Last summer, some of our instructional tech teachers had the opportunity to attend ISTE. Right now, Linda Ashida is attending and presenting at the Learn Forward Conference with Lori Abbott.  These are just a few examples of the many opportunities our teachers have had recently (please share more!).

One thing that struck me most about attending NCTE was the open collaboration and sharing between not only presenters and audiences, but also between people in the audience; connections made between elementary, high school, and university staff; and the people connected on Twitter through the hashtag.  I was able to attend session strands in rhetoric, writing, and social justice--three topics I have been focusing on in my own professional development this year.  Currently I am working on a blog series to summarize and share what I have learned.

Ultimately the goal of attending these conferences doesn't end just at personal professional development, but it then continues to also multiply the learning back at our own school.  I was able to bring materials back to my team and to suggest other ideas for our curriculum and instruction.  I think so often teachers get bogged down with the day-to-day and year-to-year demands of the classroom and lives.  It's vital, I believe, for each of us to--as often as we can--get out, share our ideas, feel affirmation for what we are doing, be challenged by new ideas, and learn in order to grow.

Introducing new vocabulary, concepts

by Kirsten Fletcher

Where would we be in this profession if we didn't have colleagues who shared great ideas? I saw this on Twitter the other day, and it made me feel a little more justified in sharing ideas that weren't mine.

So in the spirit of collaboration, here are two fun ideas that I implemented recently to "hook" students into new material.



I started with a word wall. I saw a word wall hanging in Anna Izzo's classroom a few weeks ago and really liked the visual reminder of advanced vocabulary that her Italian students could use as a reference. When I asked her about it, she said the idea actually came from Mark Heintz. Who knows where he got it? Collaboration!

At any rate, Anna had students brainstorm vocabulary on a topic, look up words they thought would be useful for discussing the topic in Italian, then write them on butcher paper that she posted in the classroom. Sounds simple, right? So last week when I started my new AP theme on science and technology, we began by brainstorming, looking up words that students found useful, and making our class list. The process of writing the list generated some good discussion (and spelling practice for our class secretary).


From here we moved on to the quote activity. I learned this from Dawn Samples, an amazing world language educator and administrator who recently led a workshop at the Fall ICTFL (Illinois Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Conference. Basically, the quote activity works like this.

• I searched for quotes in French pertaining to science and technology. 
• I printed out enough that I had at least two quotes per student. 
• I seated students in a circle, and each student started with two quotes. 
• They read both, then kept the one they liked best / agreed with and passed the other. They continued reading and passing for several minutes. 
• Next, students paired up and read their quote to their partner. They had to justify why they chose it and make a connection. 
• They did this with several partners before reporting out to the class. 

I feel like the quote activity allows students to interact with material in so many ways. The reading step not only exposes them to new vocabulary in context, but also encourages them to think critically. You could even use pictures, infographics, cartoons, etc. instead of quotes. The partner sharing gives them the opportunity to articulate their ideas and demonstrate comprehension. It enhances both listening and speaking skills.

On this day, we ended the activity by adding any new words we learned from the quotes to our word wall. Since then, we have continued to refer back to the word wall with any new reading or listening activity to keep the vocabulary relevant. We have added many useful words that I would never have thought to put on a vocab list. Since the word wall is hanging in the room, I have referred to it in lower levels as well. It's never too early to expand our vocabulary!

The Collab Lab Resource Hub

Written by Linda Ashida

The Collab Lab Resource Hub is the website that serves to document the myriad professional learning experiences at Elk Grove High School, and to curate resources to facilitate future learning.

We invite you to explore check out the Resource Hub.  Among other things you will find: 

•Information about our Teacher-led Institute Days.

•Resources to impact learning in 1:1 classrooms.  Under the "Resources" tab you will find helpful links on Notability, Schoology, and more! Many of the resources have been contributed by staff at EG or other District 214 Schools.

•Information about our Elk Grove Lead Learners Team 

•Information about our Peer Observation Groups

The Collab Lab Resource Hub is a work in progress, so some pages are more developed than others, but they still serve to as one important way, in addition to using social media (this blog and Twitter) to document and share our professional learning journey and curate resources to multiply our learning.

How do you document and curate resources from your own or your school's professional learning? Please share your examples!

We always look forward to receiving feedback, suggestions, or resources you have to share.

Leave us a comment or come see us in the Collab Lab!

Multiplying Learning

by Katie Winstead

Yesterday we had a very special opportunity to do some cool things at Elk Grove High School. Normally on Thursday mornings, educators have time between 7:40-9:00am to meet with PLTs. Yesterday, as Linda described in her previous blog post, we had a "Late, Late Start" which allowed us to have an extra hour of time to learn together!

With this extra time, we decided to get everyone together from some staff-led professional development. The morning started off with a wide variety of Spark Sessions - from mastery learning and peer tutoring, to modeling and scaffolding for learners of all types in a variety of settings. We learned about how these ideas impacted learning and, in some cases, the technology used to make the impact even greater. Each Spark Session was 3-5 minutes - and one session was even live on Periscope!

From there, staff members had the opportunity to learn more about the different Spark Sessions by meeting the presenter and colleagues in different rooms for an informal Learning Lab. It was great to see all the ideas being passed around. The presenters did a great job sparking interest (which then inspired everyone to join a room of their choosing) and then the entire staff was able to talk about different ways to implement the ideas and further ways to improve them.

Colleagues gathering to talk about Visible Learning.

One session I went to was with Adam Clayton, who talked about how important it is to increase language skills in math classes. He wanted to make learning visible by having students talk about their reasoning while solving math problems. To do this, he used Schoology to push out example problems that students opened in Notability. Once in Notability, students then recorded themselves talking about the problems while they solved them (see image below). These recording and notes can then be turned back into Schoology by sharing it as a note (a strategy I thought of last year - to find out more click here).

The most amazing thing about the session was that one teacher posed a question:

If I wanted to respond and write back to the student, could I then send the note to them with my voice and notes added?

Nobody really knew.. I suggested possibly sending it back in an email, but a second later Kim told us that you can drop back assignments to students in Schoology, so why not a note? Next thing you know everyone is playing around in Notability and sure enough - it worked! We practiced adding on additional audio recordings in Notability while drawing - that worked as well! It was amazing to see everyone working together to come up with a great new idea and multiplying learning. I learned something great that I would never have known if we hadn't had all those resources in one room together. So thank you to all my amazing colleagues for the great learning opportunity!

We would love to hear about your experiences with Spark Sessions, the Learning Labs, or any cool professional development opportunities you have been a part of and why they were so enjoyable =)