The Teaching With Jamaica conference works with the same Jamaican teachers 3 years in a row and then new teachers are sent by the Jamaican Ministry of Education and Jamaican Link Ministries. When we went last year, it was our final year with that group of teachers...or so we thought. Because so many of the schools and the teachers were utilizing all of the strategies in their classrooms and because they were still asking for more strategies coupled with classroom management strategies, it was decided that we would work with the same group of teachers for a mini 4-day workshop, providing one last push of strategy instruction in Reading and Mathematics while at the same time providing direct-instruction in some classroom management techniques. So, at this year's conference, we taught early childhood reading and math classes, lower elementary reading and math classes, upper elementary reading and math classes, and Conscious Discipline methods class. With these classes as a base, the workshops worked on a rotation within the different age levels. For instance, lower elementary level teachers were split into one group--1 day math workshop and 1 day in reading workshop. Each morning, they would also have an hour of Conscious Discipline instruction.
My part at both last year's and this year's conferences was teaching on the Upper Reading team. The beauty of working with teachers on a 3-year rotation is that we can continue to build the instruction year-to-year.
Last year, I was on a team of 3 teachers- Susan Polansky, Peggy Clemons, and myself. We co-taught the process of the making the Reading-Writing connection--reading as a writer and writing as a reader. To aid in this process, we used the book Calvin Coconut: Trouble Magnet. We concentrated on teaching teachers how to use the book text as mentor writing for the students--having them use sentence imitating to teach structure and word usage techniques in writing--having students identify sentences they liked in the book, have the students identify why the sentence grabbed them...why the parts worked together so well, and then mimic that sentence structure or word choice in their own writing. (Anderson, 2007) We then discussed how to utilize Quick Writes to respond to the reading and to connect Calvin's experiences with their own. We also taught strategies on summarization and main idea, organization, and author's purpose utilizing chapters in the book as well as short nonfiction books we brought as giveaways. At the end of the session when teachers filled out surveys, they indicated a desire to learn more about deepening comprehension as well as some graphic organizers for writing.
Following is a video of me having a discussion about objectives and verb choice for The Fundamental 5 with the teachers.
Last year, I was on a team of 3 teachers- Susan Polansky, Peggy Clemons, and myself. We co-taught the process of the making the Reading-Writing connection--reading as a writer and writing as a reader. To aid in this process, we used the book Calvin Coconut: Trouble Magnet. We concentrated on teaching teachers how to use the book text as mentor writing for the students--having them use sentence imitating to teach structure and word usage techniques in writing--having students identify sentences they liked in the book, have the students identify why the sentence grabbed them...why the parts worked together so well, and then mimic that sentence structure or word choice in their own writing. (Anderson, 2007) We then discussed how to utilize Quick Writes to respond to the reading and to connect Calvin's experiences with their own. We also taught strategies on summarization and main idea, organization, and author's purpose utilizing chapters in the book as well as short nonfiction books we brought as giveaways. At the end of the session when teachers filled out surveys, they indicated a desire to learn more about deepening comprehension as well as some graphic organizers for writing.
Following is a video of me having a discussion about objectives and verb choice for The Fundamental 5 with the teachers.
This year's conference had a different organization since it was only a 2-day wrap up conference. Each team got to spend some time learning about classroom management in a short Conscious Discipline seminar, but then spent the rest of the day in their grade level disciplines. I still worked with Upper Reading this year, but had different co-teachers--Donna Walsh and Amy Wright. Amy Wright and I worked together and were asked to co-teach about the Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction by Sean Cain and Mike Laird as well as questioning techniques and the use of graphic organizers to deepen comprehension in reading and to springboard writing ideas. The Fundamental Five is basically a framework for a complete lesson cycle for a class period. This also tied in with the emphasis of the conference on classroom management with one of the fundamental fives being working the power zone--proximity to the students. We discussed how walking around listening and interacting with students helps students to return to task, stay on task, and even to remain engaged....and even asked the teachers to discuss if and how they used proximity to control the classroom and enhance engagement. Since the last part of The Fundamental 5 deals with critical writing, we brought in questioning techniques and graphic organizers for the teachers to work with and practice with to get ready for use in their classrooms, we were able to bring in many techniques and resources for them to take back to their classroom. We had Bloom's Taxonomy charts to hand out for the teachers to work with and discussed hanging the chart in the classroom for student usage, not just teacher usage, and then discussed different ways to encourage students to use the chart--for questioning in groups, choosing a verb from the chart to develop an activity for the group/class to show learning of a subject, writing prompts, etc. The teachers loved having some time to discuss different ways to utilize the chart in their classroom, both as teachers and for their students. We also gave a list of question stems and had the teachers brainstorm ways to use them in their classrooms. We found that the more we let them brainstorm, the more they took ownership of their part in deepening the learning in the classroom for themselves. They also liked challenging each other to see who could come up with more creative, thus engaging, ideas for the classroom that reached higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy. (They shared that they were familiar with Bloom's and used it for objectives, but had not thought about making the verbs part of everyday active learning in the classroom.) One of our giveaway drawings in this segment was for copies of the book Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana. Between each of the 5 segments of the Fundamental Five, we reinforced Brain Break activities we introduced last summer--where a teacher talks for 5-10 minutes and then has students stand up and complete some little activity, like cross body reaching, dancing, marching, or some other silly activity to re-engage their brains. Then with extra time at the end of our portion, we covered some graphic organizers they could use for both writing and reading comprehension---setting up and breaking down parts of a story. (Cain, 2011)
The following are some of the handouts we gave for The Fundamental 5 presentation. (Cain, 2011)
In the afternoon of the two days, I partnered with Donna Walsh to teach the use of comprehension strategies from Notice and Notes by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst. (Several of these books were also given out as giveaways.) This concept teachers students to look for 6 signposts of activity in stories that can cause change or deeper thinking in a character, thus becoming important to the basic story. When students learn to watch for these signposts, and are taught to discuss the impacts of these signposts on the story and on the characters, deeper comprehension of the story is reached due to more active engagement on the part of the student not only in the classroom, but also with the story which leads the student to reflect on their own experiences in relation to the text. Donna first taught the 6 signposts to the teachers and let them discuss what they might mean to a student reading a story. To help direct their ideas in one direction, she then read a children's book and stopped at intervals to have discussions about signposts teachers would identify, allowing the teachers time to discuss with each other whether each person's idea was right or wrong and why--with emphasis on the why. By allowing them to discuss and question each other, it was easy to show that these signposts coupled with small group discussion time helped to build the students' ability to find and use text evidence. After completing the activity in a small group, she read another children's story, gave each group a piece of chart paper, and let them chart/graph their 6 signposts for the story. Each group then presented their charts and discussed/debated their answers compared to other groups. The whole activity proved to open more dialog between students (our teachers) about reading and let them decide which direction the discussions might go and what the answers and life lessons actually might be. Engagement was elevated and more connections to text were evident. Plus, the whole discussion/debate process brought the higher level questioning discussed in the morning session to the forefront in this activity, thus reiterating the importance of the higher level verbs/Blooms usage on the part of students. (Beers, 2012)
Video of a small group presenting their signposts chart (I love their accents!):
The following is a synopsis of Notice and Notes that Donna gave to the participants and then a copy of the 6 different signposts she gave out and had posted on the classroom walls. (These posters were teacher giveaways at the end of each day.) (Beers, 2012)
Anderson, J. (2007). Everyday editing. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Beers, G. K., & Probst, R .E. (2012). Notice & note: strategies for close reading. New Hampshire: Heinemann.
Cain, S., & Laird, M. (2011). The fundamental 5: the formula for quality instruction. S.I: s.n.].
Beers, G. K., & Probst, R .E. (2012). Notice & note: strategies for close reading. New Hampshire: Heinemann.
Cain, S., & Laird, M. (2011). The fundamental 5: the formula for quality instruction. S.I: s.n.].