Posts

Posted on

Inquiry Into Goal-Making

We’re in the business of growth as educators. But the act of actually setting tangible goals can be intimidating for us all. Why not start by investigating with your class what it means to set goals to get the dialogue going?

Resource #1: What’s Stopping You From Achieving Your Goals by Soul Pancake

Resource #2: One Little Word by Ali Edwards

Resource #3:  Kids Health Facts on Setting Goals

Resource #4: Kobi Yamada & Mae Besom’s books (these are wonderful provocations to help students consider growth and progress through problems and ideas).

Provocation Questions: 

  • What is a goal?
  • Why do people set goals?
  • What are the different perspectives on setting goals?
  • What is our responsibility to grow?
  • How does an individual’s goal-setting impact their life? Their community?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

My Most-Read Posts of 2017

Last year, I shared 20 of my favorite blog posts that I read from educators around the world during 2016. With the help of a great bookmark Chrome extension to help me chronologically sort my bookmarks, I am excited to be working on a similar post for 2017 to help me search out patterns and reflect on my biggest aha moments this year — and of course, to thank the teachers who have taken some of their precious time to share!

But meanwhile, I’m inspired by George Couros’ recent post in which he shares the 5 most-read posts on his own blog. I appreciate the chance to create, as he puts it, “an archive for my learning as well as an opportunity to share with others.”

#5: TPT: On Teacher’s Personal Generosity: I continue to ponder this debate as I watch the headlines on providing tax breaks for teacher spending. I can’t help but speculate over certain “what if” scenarios, but I remain firm in my view that there are so many deeply personal layers to this issue that we need to make compassion a priority.

TPT Debate: On Teacher’s Personal Generosity

#4: Change: A Where We Are In Place & Time Provocation: I’m so glad that what started out as a way for me to archive and organize the most thought-provoking resources I find has proven helpful for so many teachers!

Change: A “Where We Are in Place & Time” Provocation

#3: A How We Express Ourselves [In the 21st Century] Provocation: I wrote this provocation as a way to help us remember that self-expression is a truly boundless endeavor in our 21st century world. I enjoyed the chance to revisit the video, “The Adaptable Mind” that I included here; I found it fascinating view at how the world is shifting, and what skills will empower us and and our students.

A How We Express Ourselves [In the 21st Century] Provocation

#2: 4 Reasons We Just Can’t Break Up With Basals (& How to Finally Move On!): I think many of our fancy new computer programs are the new “basal reading program,” but with the stamp of “personalized” tech, they are not held to the same scrutiny. My biggest concern rests with the notion that our struggling readers especially need such programs for remediation, but I think Pernille Ripp put it best in her currently-pinned tweet:

4 Reasons We Just Can’t Break Up with Basals (& How to Finally Move On)

#1: Inquiry: What Trajectory are YOU On? I’m actually quite pleased that this one gained the most views of posts I wrote this year because it’s a wonderful showcase of thinking and growth from a group a teachers I hold dear. It was also a great opportunity for me to synthesize all my resources and understanding on what it means to be an inquiry teacher so far. I know I still have a long way to go, but I am proud of mileposts like these along the way.

Inquiry: What Trajectory Are YOU On?

Thank you all so much for reading and for sharing your own work! It is such a gift for me to be able to continue my professional learning through this platform and through interacting with my PLN.

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

Read Alongs Here to Save Sanity During Christmas Break #TeacherMom

Raise your hand if your kids ask to watch movies all day every day during holidays? Raise your hand if it has your sanity hanging by a thread within a few minutes?

via GIPHY

Enter read alongs! We already had a couple of these from CD’s included in picture books, but I decided to explore the audiobook section of our library as well to see whether my kids might enjoy them.

Parent win! Besides the blessed decrease in movie-begging, I have observed some unlooked-for benefits:

  • Opportunities to cooperate as they share the books while they listen
  • Opportunities for my older child to encourage print awareness with her brother
  • Discussions on expressions and vocabulary with my daughter as she repeatedly listens to Kate DiCamillo’s humorous “Bink & Gollie Two For One” (ie, “there are no winners here,” or “without question”)
  • Increase in our reading time as we can listen to stories while we eat meals
  • Impromptu dance parties (courtesy of the baby thoroughly enjoying the music that plays in the background of many of the books)

If any of these sound appealing, fire up some audiobooks today! In addition to checking out your local library, be sure to browse these free online options:

Storyline Online: High-quality read-alouds, often read by actors and actresses. I especially love that this one includes an app — makes it easier for me to play books over Bluetooth speakers so we don’t need to worry about huddling around a screen.

The Indianapolis Public Library Ready to Read Compilation: These books are well-laid out visually for you to browse and click, taking you to a Youtube video read aloud. There’s some overlap with the books available on Storyline, but there’s still a great selection of old favorites along with some great newer reads!

Just Books Read Aloud: This one has the largest selection of the three at over 700 choices, though you will notice that the quality of the read alouds tends to be lower. But if a child finds a treasured book, I doubt he/she will mind!

What audiobooks or sources have you found and enjoyed?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

Inquiry Into Learner Profiles: Principled

This is part of a series of inquiry-based provocations for essential elements of the PYP and the Learner Profile. For more, click here.

What does it mean to be principled? This one can be so broad and abstract, that even my fifth graders struggled with it from time to time. Most know that it has some correlation to honesty, but beyond that can get a bit hazy. Here are some resources that might help your students identify some of the nuances to being and becoming more principled.

Resource #1: Randy Pausch — Live the Right Way (part of a talk given during the terminal stages of Randy’s cancer).

Resource #2: “Dear Report Cards, You Suck” by 6th grade student, Lynton, who is a student in Abe Moore’s classroom where they strive to focus on the learning rather than the grades (click image to link to Lynton’s work).

Resource #3: Penny & Her Marble by Kevin Henkes

Resource #4: We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen

Resource #5: Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen

Provocation Questions:

  • How does being principled connect to being honest with others?
  • How does it connect to being honest with ourselves?
  • What does it mean to be “true to yourself?” What is our responsibility to be true to ourselves?
  • How does a person being principled impact our school? Our community? Our world?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

What’s The Difference Between Skills & Mindsets?

A friend in my PLN recently responded to one of my tweets with some thought-provoking questions.

My initial response was to say the difference between a skill and a mindset is that mindsets are more of an innate part of us, whereas skills are not necessarily fundamental to our human experience. But let’s take a look, for instance, at the approaches to learning skills encouraged at in the PYP Programme:

  • Thinking skills:
    • Acquisition of knowledge
    • Comprehension
    • Application
    • Analysis
    • Synthesis
    • Evaluation
    • Dialectical thought
    • Metacognition
  • Communication skills: 
    • Listening
    • Speaking
    • Reading
    • Writing
    • Viewing
    • Presenting
    • Non-verbal communication
  • Self-management skills:
    • Gross motor skills
    • Fine motor skills
    • Spatial awareness
    • Organization
    • Time management
    • Safety
    • Healthy lifestyle
    • Codes of behavior
    • Informed choices
  • Research skills
    • Formulating questions
    • Observing
    • Planning
    • Collecting data
    • Recording data
    • Organizing data
    • Interpreting data
    • Presenting research findings
  • Social skills:
    • Accepting responsibility
    • Respecting others
    • Cooperating
    • Resolving conflict
    • Group decision-making
    • Adopting a variety of group roles

Clearly, many of these skills are crucial parts of the human experience, that could well be thought of as a mindset, such as metacognition, listening, and respecting others. Meanwhile, the PYP Programme also includes attitudes we work to encourage, including:

  • Appreciation
  • Commitment
  • Confidence
  • Cooperation
  • Creativity
  • Curiosity
  • Empathy
  • Enthusiasm
  • Independence
  • Integrity
  • Respect
  • Tolerance

These are certainly what I would consider fundamental mindsets, or ways of thinking, along with Agency. I think it’s clear that we are always working to cultivate all these skills and mindsets. It’s just that skills are the means by which we cultivate mindsets. 

All that said, because these mindsets are innate, fundamental parts of us all, I believe that if we make room for and honor student voice in our classrooms, they will show us additional, unanticipated means by which we can create a culture of agency, empathy, enthusiasm, etc.

What are ways you seek to cultivate mindsets in your classroom?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

 

Posted on

Inquiry Into Learner Profiles: Caring

This is part of a series of inquiry-based provocations for essential elements of the PYP and the Learner Profile. For more, click here.

For a culture of kindness to truly grow in our school, we need to constantly nourish and discuss it. After all, if we limit the discussion to the occasional anti-bullying assembly we can’t really expect students to thoroughly catch the vision of what it really looks like, and to feel comfortable speaking up for kindness. If your class is in need of a recharge, please use any or all of these resources to inquire into what it means to be caring!

Resource #1: “Give a Little Love, Get A Little Love” Kritovatka

Resource #2: Kind is…Radical Hospitality by Soul Pancake

Resource #3: The Gnomist: A Great Big Beautiful Act of Kindness by Great Big Story (this is a longer video at 17 minutes, but if you happen to be able to make the time, I promise it’s worthwhile. Here’s the trailer, too!)

https://vimeo.com/158075143

Resource #4: “Those Shoes” by Maribeth Boelts and Noah Z. Jones

Provocation Questions: 

  • What does it mean to be caring?
  • What is people’s responsibility to be caring?
  • What are the different perspectives in a community when it comes to public acts of kindness?
  • What are some obstacles that sometimes stand in the way of expressing caring?
  • What can we do to overcome obstacles that sometimes stand in the way of being caring?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

5 Favorite Children’s Books (2017 Read Alouds)

I always love the opportunity to make another #booklist because it helps me catch up on my Goodreads indexing — not to mention the fact that it helps me think about which books really draw me in and why. So I appreciate this pass-it-forward invitation via Norah Colvin. Thanks Norah!

For those I nominate that want to join in, here are the “rules:”

  1. Thank whoever’s nominated you and share their blog link.
  2. Let us know your top 5 children’s books
  3. Nominate 5 people to do the same
  4. Let your nominees know you nominated them

I can’t make a top 5 list of children’s books without it being from a pretty specific category to narrow it down! So I’m going to choose from junior fiction. That I’ve read this year. That I would consider as classroom read aloud material. These were the ones that I couldn’t put down — that I carried upstairs and downstairs and in my diaper bag and on my nightstand, all in the hopes of catching another few pages. I hope you enjoy them as well (P.S. You’ve probably noticed a genre trend here–I promise I did check out many realistic fictions, but for whatever, reason, they weren’t doing it for me this year. Mystery all the way in 2017!)

Incorrigible Children by Maryrose Wood: I am dying for the next book in the Incorrible Children series! As much as I love following the story of the 3 children raised by wolves that are now brought up by their plucky young governess Penelope Lumley, I think I might enjoy Wood’s Lemony-Snickett-like narrative asides just as much.

Nooks & Crannies by Jessica Lawson: If you loved Roald Dahl’s books growing up, or even just possessed a vague inclination, this one is worth checking out. In a Matilda-meets-Charlie & the Chocolate Factory story, Tabitha Crum, along with 4 other children, is invited to the home of a fabulously wealthy Countess for an important announcement. She is quickly swept up in a mystery as children start disappearing and the Countess doesn’t seem what she appears.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill: Breath-taking. I loved the poetry and flow, and I never wanted it to end. From Goodreads: “One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic…An epic coming-of-age fairy tale.”

The Detective’s Assistant by Kate Hannigan: Ok, this one definitely merges some historical fiction in with the mystery! I enjoyed the character development and interactions as Nell works to prove herself to be of use to her Aunt Kate when she is brought to her doorstep. This assistance eventually builds from chores to real-life detective work to assist Aunt Kate’s work with the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel: I was introduced to Oppel’s work this year and loved it all (The Nest and Every Hidden Thing also topped my lists this year, but neither one would probably be suitable as elementary read alouds–intensity in The Nest and some mature content in Every Hidden Thing). The Boundless will make for a gripping read-aloud as Will Everett must keep ahead of a deadly plot while working his way up the Boundless train!

5 bloggers nominated to add their 5!

Pernille Ripp: Many of my library book holds are because of Pernille’s advice! An English teacher in Wisconsin, she’s always pushing the status quo on reading and writing instruction.

Faige Meller: Though retired from her own kindergarten classroom, Faige’s work in influencing children is far from finished! She often writes about her work as a substitute children and about how we can better connect with our students–and one of my daughter’s new favorite reads (Roxaboxen) came from her recommendation.

Man-Cub Mamas: On the #TeacherMom spectrum, this blog is definitely more on the Mom side, with all sorts of tips at home. My favorite, of course, as been the book recommendations, supplied by a good friend of mine, which is why I’m adding the nomination here!

LitLife Blog: The literary connection of this blog is clear in the title, and I am a huge fan of Pam Allyn’s work. I haven’t heard from them on that platform for a while now, but perhaps this nomination might invite a new book list? 🙂

Library Girl: I am so impressed by her work with the #30SecondBookTalks and World Book Talk Competition. Jennifer LeGarde is passionate about creating cultures of reading.

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto