Question for you: In your class, who do you want to be doing most of the thinking/learning?

Guiding Principle #1: The one doing the talking is the one doing the cognitive work. 

Guiding Principle #2: The uninterrupted attention span for adult learners is estimated to be only around 20 minutes (Lowe 2011). 
On a good day, cut that in about by 1/4 or 1/2 for kids. 

Next Question: What is the approximate ratio of the amount of time you talk vs. the amount of time your students talk (productive, on-topic conversation) during a typical class period?

Challenge: Monitor yourself over the week and try to determine your ballpark ratio of teacher to student talk time.

Who's doing the heavy lifting during your class time? Click here for a super-brief article that gives ideas on how to get students doing the lion-share of the thinking/talking/working.

WARNING: 
1. The article mentions strategies applied in an elementary setting; HOWEVER, most translate beautifully to high school. Don't be turned off.
 
2. Some of the strategies may not be new to you - great! Try to use something you haven't tried before or up the frequency of ones you currently use.

Teach on~

Our final installment is one of my faves for a couple of reasons. First, it's completely low/no-prep - you can pull this off easily at the last minute or on the fly. Secondly, students do all the work - they do all the talking, writing, and processing. 
You can call it Taboo, CatchPhrase, $25.000 Pyramid, or PassWord. Here is how one of my teachers facilitated it:

1. She set up chairs with backs to the board for half the number of students in her class. 
2. Told half the class to sit and the other half to find someone to stand in front of facing the board. The partner facing the board is the clue giver, and the one sitting is the guesser.
3. Projected 5 terms or concepts for the clue giver to describe. The object is to get the guesser to say all 5 terms in the time allotted (you decide how long - one to one and a half minutes works pretty well).
4. At the end of time, both partners write down the words and all the clues given for each word. This part is crucial. What they write down is essentially student-generated definitions and connections that make sense to them. That's what we want, right? If you skip this, you've lost the majority of it's effectiveness - I call it mojo.
5. Have the class offer definitions or clues for words others didn't get. Let them answer as much for each other as they can before you step in.
6. Switch and repeat with a new set of words.
7. To keep it fresh, after partners do two rounds, have one side shift down one seat. Now everyone has a new partner - repeat as long as you feel is effective. 
8. This teacher also created a great sheet for students to write down their words and clues. it also has a space to write their score (number guessed) for each set of words.

See below for pics of Taboo in action, and see attached for the tally form.
Happy Friday, y'all!

Our next strategy is one I've shown before, but it's been a while. This one is worth pulling out of the archive.
It's Jeopardy Labs and is a thousand times easier and more efficient than trying to build Jeopardy with Power Point.
You can choose "Quick Build" and start building your game right away. It's an easy click and type  process. When you are finished, just click "Save."

HOT TIP: After saving, J. Labs will take you to a screen that gives you the URL to play and a URL to edit your new board. COPY, PASTE, and SAVE the two addresses somewhere. This is the only way you will be able to get back to your game to play or edit. Check out screen shot below.

Like many other online tools, you can browse its gallery of games built by other teachers. Don't reinvent the wheel - make an existing wheel better.
Let me know how it goes if you give it a try!
Kathy

End of the year and you are neck deep in... "exam review"... dun dun dunnnn
So how do you review? Same old 4-day review packet got you down?

Shake things up for you and your students. Let your students tell YOU what they need to review. No, don't throw out the "Who has questions?" line. That's a surefire way to get 'crickets' in response.

Check out the student self-assessment strategy pics below. They come to us from our friends in Math. Here's what they did...

1. They prioritized their course vocabulary into "Must Know," "Good to Know," and "Nice to Know" categories. 
2. Had students sort the "Must Know" words into three more categories: "I know it and could explain it," " Kind of know it but couldn't explain it to someone," and "Did we cover that this semester?"
3. Students were given colored stickies cut in half. They used yellow for "Know it," blue for "Kind of know it," and pink for "Did we cover it."
4. Students group words by color in designated places around the room.
5. Students then organize each color by grouping same words together (eg. all "domain" stickies together, all "range" together, and so on).
6. Grouping allows you to see which words appear most and least in each color category.

What this does:

1. To sort the words, students must process what they know about each word - hence, review.
2. It is anonymous, so students are more likely to be honest with you and themselves.
3. For words they put in the "Know and can explain" category, use students to teach them to others. 1. they learn better from each other, and 2. it will catch those who overestimate their knowledge and skills.
4. It is almost always eye-opening. You will predict many of the categorizations, but you will probably get a few surprises as well.
5. By prioritizing, you can allocate precious class time efficiently. Why review info kids already know? Why not use your time in areas students are weakest?

There are lots of ways to vary this strategy. Rather than use stickies, I have a teacher who has students mark each word using colored pencils or markers.
So how do you review?
Hang in there, Teacher Warriors~

This installment of "Lit Tips" focuses on the skill of summarization - a skill we assume high school students should have well in hand, but often find out the contrary.

​Summary /ˈsəmərē/ : a brief statement or account of the main points of something.
synonyms: abridged, abbreviated, shortened, condensed
​
What do you often get when you ask students to summarize – a paraphrase, a retelling, something unintelligible? Often, I’m not sure students know exactly what we mean by “summary.” They may have been told somewhere along the way, but can we be sure? I hypothesize that students often think of summarization as retelling or paraphrasing, when in fact it means to boil down to only the most critical. Yes, theyshould now what it is by now and how to write one, but what if they don’t, or they’re not sure?
We must be explicit in what we ask of them, and in some cases teach or re-teach skills we think they should have mastered by now.

Summarization is a skill that is specifically addressed in the Common Core Literacy Standards:
Reading Standards for History/Social Studies:  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2 
Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.

Reading Standards for Science/Technical Subjects: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.2
Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; trace the text's explanation or depiction of a complex process, phenomenon, or concept; provide an accurate summary of the text.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sending out a few summarization strategies that can be adapted for any content. Our first one is called “Pyramid Summary.”
You may use the template attached, have students draw it themselves, or create your own. For each line, give instructions in this pattern:
Line 1: Character’s name 
Line 2: Two words describing the character 
Line 3: Three words describing the setting 
Line 4: Four words stating the problem 
Line 5: Five words describing one event 
Line 6: Six words describing another event 
Line 7: Seven words describing a third event 
Line 8: Eight words describing the solution to the problem

…or for Social Studies:
Line 1: One word for a significant location
Line 2: Two words describing location
Line 3: Three words describing climate of the location
Line 4: Four words describing location’s impact on people living there
Line 5: Five words describing conflicts in this area
…and so on…
​How could other content areas adapt the pyramid?​
Students will then write a summary using their pyramid as a guide.

So, you've developed your common targets, and your kids have turned in their easy-to-manage common formative assessment...now what??

It's kind of like going home after trick-or-treating - you spread out all your candy on the table and see what 'cha got!

Once in your team, do a little sorting first - here are some options:

• three piles: "Got it, " kind of got it," "nothing close" (or whatever titles you give them!)
• Sort by similar mistakes
• others?
• Be sure to go beyond simple correct/incorrect - look for breakdowns or gaps in thinking/knowledge.

Next, look at the WHAT and then the WHY - in that order. Make objective observations first - this is critical! 
Questions to consider when looking at results:

WHAT?

• What do they know/what can they do now?
• In what areas do you see success?
• What patterns in student mistakes do you see?

Our tendency is to gloss over this step and jump to the why - I can almost promise it will happen. Take the advice of Axl Rose and have a little Patience. You'll overlook important details if you jump too soon.

WHY?

• Where are the possible places their thinking broke down?
• Two students can get a question/problem wrong but for very different reasons. Group common mistakes together. 
• What could be the root cause of each mistake?

This Lit Tip installment is brought to you by the letter "D" as in, "data." Yep, I said it...that four letter word that conjures up images of spreadsheets, colored graphs, 0's and 1's, quintiles, quartiles, and percentages (or is it percentiles?). 
I contend that we can tame the data beast. 

Rather than wrestling with common assessments in the form of unit tests or even large quizzes, let's shift our thinking to common formativeassessments. In your PLCs, agree on a common exit slip question (or two). Create an item that will give you the best insight into student progress toward a target or standard. Sort the exit slips into "Got it," "Kinda got it," and "Nowhere close" piles. 
BAM! That's data!
Remember the purposes of data and formative assessments are to keep an eye on how your students are progressing rather than waiting for a unit test.


Take your results to your next PLC meeting and compare with your team. Keep it manageable, informative, and efficient.

Next week.."Data, data everywhere, but what do we do with it now???"

Word of the week: simplify

"So, what is the difference between learning targets and an agenda, anyway??"
Well, here's the official answer...

• ​Learning Targets are statements of what students will know and be able to do at the end of the lesson (two lessons at most).
• The agenda is the list of activities you have planned to develop those skills or show their progress toward them.

​​
Think of it as learning targets being the destination, and the agenda as the list of vehicles you're using to get there.
To the right is an example from a ninth grade Earth/Environmental Science class:

Winter Break - Part Deux...
Let's crunch the numbers, shall we? Over the past two weeks, rather than having 10 days of class time, we have had 10 hours. Yikes! Talk about being out of a routine!
...and where have our students' brains been during all that unexpected, mostly unstructured time? Who knows!
So the challenge becomes how do we rein in their brains, energy and focus after snowball fights, sleeping in, innumerable dramas, junk food binges, and who knows what?
I found a great article that was actually written for teachers coming back from extended holiday breaks, but it fits our circumstances very well.
In her article, "How to Use Brain Science to Engage Students After the Holidays." neurologist, Judy Willis, gives us practical information on how to corral our students after a long break.
Here are some of the highlights:

• Novelty and the unexpected get the brain's attention - use them!
• Getting back to the same old same old too quickly may actually contribute to lack of focus and some behavior difficulties.
• Change the furniture around.
• Get them up and moving - brain breaks are great for elevating or calming energy.
• Have music playing.
• Change something in the room.
• Let them get out some of their "stories" from the snow days. Keep in mind that this doesn't have to turn into an episode of Dr. Phil. They can write about it, draw about it...
• Have students write or draw about something from our time off, then with a partner, they have exactly one minute to tell everything that happened. When the minute is up - it's up! Total time = maybe 5 minutes. Total saved time because they had a chance to get it out of their systems = hmmmmm???