ELA 8 Questioning

While reading the story Random Sample students were asked to generate their own questions when they were confused about something they had read.  This was pretty easy for them because the story is quite confusing.  As a class we eliminated any questions that we could explicitly answer using the text.  Next students were asked to get into groups and try to answer the implicit questions.  This was much more difficult for them.  They had to reason with evidence and build explanations from the story to justify their answers.  They also had to make connections to the real world and activate prior knowledge in order to answer their questions and understand the text.  Towards the end of the hour we came back together as a group and worked through the story and questions together.

Overall I would use this activity again when reading this story.  In the past I have explained the story as we read it together.  However, allowing students to formulate questions and answers on their own created a much more engaging atmosphere, and it allowed various perspectives on the story come to the forefront.  I thought they understood the story on a deeper level and were able to think critically about its implications in the real world.

Back in October I introduced our Kettlebells using a COMPASS POINTS CoT.  It was pretty simple.  I used Excel to create a worksheet.  It looked something like this:




NAME________________________SUBJECT__________________DATE____________


                                                                NEED TO KNOW



WORRIES ABOUT THIS                                                                   EXCITES YOU



                                                                 STANCE (OPINION)

The students filled the worksheet out and we went from there.  We use the Kettlebells once a week.  At the end of the Semester, I want to have the students fill out the worksheets again to see what kind of feedback I get.

Any suggestions to improve this would be appreciated. If anyone wants a copy of the worksheet I can send it to you.

Rykse - Challenge 2 Reflecting

What makes a line a "best fit"?

In our current statistics unit, we have been playing with making scatter plots out of data and looking to see if there is a pattern to the data. We then would try to model the pattern with a line when possible. We were doing this informally and didn't have any "rules" about how you should draw the line. As we played a little more, student comments started to include statements like "your line looks better then my line".

At this point we stopped. Students took a couple of minutes on their own to write down what characteristics made a line a better fit than other lines. Students then took turns in a group of 4 sharing their characteristics. The group came up with a list of common characteristics they had. Groups then shared their lists and we made a class list.  Our class list became our guide to what a line of best fit should be and was just as good as any textbook definition.

It turned out that a common characteristic they talked about informally was the idea of getting as many points as close as possible to the line. I decided to introduce the idea of residuals which was just the formal concept of what they were describing. It then became a game of who could create the best fit line in the class.

Pausing to let students reflect on how they were perceiving a best fit line allowed them to take ownership of the idea and seemed to lead to more engagement.

ESL ELA and Honors 9

The ESL ELA class has been working on an essay called, "This I Believe," they spent weeks finding their purpose, finding their voice and finding the courage to let their story explode from the place where it came from…their hearts.  Their stories were published, they shared them with each other, I noticed that when they shared their stories, walls came down, relationships were continuing to build and confidence was growing. The next day they walked into my class and I had on our daily schedule:  Everyone has a story to tell, today is your day to tell it. I told them to follow me, that today their voices would be heard, so we marched on down to Jessica Cleland's Honors 9 ELA class. Jessica and her class welcomed my 8th and 9th graders into their classroom. My class huddled in the corner of her class, literally they stood in a united huddle in the front corner of her classroom. I explained to Jessica's class that the ESL class has been working on their believe essays and that today they wanted to share their stories with them. The ESL students stepped up one by one (not all the students shared, to be honest only my 8th graders were comfortable sharing), they stepped up and they read their stories in the front of the class. A brief overview of the topics of these stories: hardships, devastation, hope, change…. After each story was read, the Honors 9 students offered a praise and a question to relate with each student's story. Let me say that again…they praised their writing. They questioned their writing. This day the ESL ELA and the Honors 9ers taught me the lesson, that there is value in sharing our stories and that sometimes students need to be heard and sometimes they just need to listen, to each other. I used to think…collect the essay, conference with the student, pass back the essay. Now I think differently. The whole experience of this assignment was a reflective piece, from thinking, to writing to sharing. After our moment in the Honors 9 class, we came back to our class and the students wrote a reflection on their experience. I didn't set any expectations, I just told them to write a reflection on the experience. The key here was for me to tell them to reflect on the experience, not the writing. They took it in any direction that they wanted and it was insightful. The students were then asked to write one strong word that captured their experience and display it on our wall.

After completing a Barbie Bungee line of fit lab, Bennink and I had students reflect on the process.  The reflections were mostly to draw attention to math dispositions (standards of practice) and how the lab provided the opportunity for students to engage in positive math habits.  I'm going to try to attach a few of the responses as images, but who knows if I can figure that out!  I think reflecting was a positive experience for students and know that I should be bringing their attention to how they regularly use standards of practice more frequently.

Professional Challenge #1 World Language Chalk Talk Questions

In Spanish 2, I did a Chalk Talk around the room on chart paper with the following questions.

1. What is the easiest category (reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary/grammar, listening) of learning Spanish? Why?
2. What is the hardest category (reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary/grammar, listening) of learning Spanish? Why?
3. What did you learn about the culture in the last unit?
4. What did you take away from the last unit?
5. How are you helping the classroom environment/community?
6. What have I done to help you learn Spanish better?
7. What could I have done to help you learn Spanish better?
8. What did you do on your own to learn Spanish in the last unit?

My goal was to get students to reflect on their own thinking process. The thinking that was evident was considering different viewpoints and making connections.  I wanted students to see what areas their peers were struggling and excelling in.  I also wanted them to see what other students took away from the unit. Lastly, I wanted to make a connection with the students and see what types of classroom activities were helpful and which ones were not.  After the students completed the questions, we discussed them as a class and I can review them in the future if necessary.

Challenge #2

One of my classes just recently began a new unit. As an introduction, the students explored a brand new pattern and then reflected on this new pattern and how it related to patterns that we have already learned about in class. In addition, I had the students share some things that they were curious about with this new pattern. This brought about a lot of good math conversations about where we have been and where we are going with this new unit.