Month: January 2020

Goal Setting

When I was about nine years old, my grandfather took me to a park behind his house. There was a quarter-mile track around the park, which he had me run. He stood at the start/stop line with an old fashioned stopwatch – think opening of 60 Minutes… tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. When I finished he’d tell me my time and always compare my results to my previous runs. It always amazed me how he remembered them. Before I could catch my breath, he’d say, “Okay, what’s our goal for the next time?” This was my first exposure to goal setting.

Years later I started setting goals more regularly and across other areas of my life. At first, my goals were vague. I want to run faster. I want to read more. I want to save more money. The problem, I soon realized, was these goals were very hard to quantify. Then I read about SMART Goals. These goals create a structure and help focus your efforts. SMART is an acronym for:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-bound

SMART Goals can be used in all areas of our lives – personal, professional, financial, etc. They can even be used in our classrooms. Let’s say I’m working with a group of students and want them to improve as readers. Wanting my students to become better readers is not a SMART Goal. The objective can be adjusted, however, to meet the criteria of a SMART Goal.

Specific – Goals need to be specific. Wanting students to become better readers is not specific. There are so many areas of reading that could help students become better readers – phonics, phonemic awareness, comprehension, vocabulary, etc. We could create a fluency goal, comprehension goal, etc. Maybe you want students to read more books because research shows reading more helps students become better readers. When making specific goals it helps to ask questions like:

Who is involved in me achieving this goal?
What do I want to accomplish?
Where might I need to go to achieve this goal?

Measureable – This is where I really struggled when I first started setting goals. I was usually missing the measurable component of SMART. I want to run faster is hard to measure and quantify. I want to run a sub-30 minute 5K is a measureable goal. We can literally measure it with a timer or my grandfather’s old-fashioned stopwatch. If we want students to read more books, we need to make this a measureable goal. I want my fourth graders to read 5 books. Now we are able to measure and determine if they were successful or not.

Achievable – The goals we set need to be achievable and realistic. I always wanted to play in the NBA, but I’m only six-foot tall and can’t jump very high. It’s not a realistic goal. Similarly, saying I want my fourth graders to read all the works of Shakespeare by the end of the school year, is probably not going to happen. Students will read five children’s books. That is much more achievable.

Relevant – Is this a relevant goal? If we’re trying to improve students’ ability in reading, we can’t set a goal to have them learn to juggle. That isn’t relevant to what we’re trying to achieve. A goal to have students read a five books is much more relevant to becoming better readers. Learning to juggle is fun though.

Time-bound – When will this goal be achieved? In a month? A year? The way our school years are structured helps create natural time barriers, which help with goal setting. When do we want student to read their five books? Students will read five children’s books each trimester. Now we have a timetable for when our goal should be measured.

SMART Goals are a great tool to help with all areas of our lives. Creating them takes some time and will often involve some failures. This requires adjusting the process and goals. If we’re always meeting all our goals, do we need to revisit our goals and increase our expectations? Should failure be part of the goal setting process as well?

Are Graphic Novels Okay to Read?

This question was posed to me at a parent-teacher conference early in my teaching career. Is it okay for our son to read graphic novels at home? The parents were concerned that these text were not challenging their son enough.

Their “problem” was they couldn’t get him to read anything other than graphic novels at home and worried they were not rigorous enough to make him a successful reader longterm. He would devour graphic novels but fought tooth and nail to read “traditional” books.

This student was extremely behind in reading just one year before I had him. While he was still below grade level in fourth grade, he made enormous strides since the beginning of third grade. What happened to help him turn this corner? One big part of the story is that he went to a comic book convention with his father the summer before third grade and got hooked on graphic novels.

I can personally attest to the interest in graphic novels. My ten-year-old daughter is a reluctant reader. She doesn’t enjoy reading traditional texts. We’ve made numerous trips to the book store, placed book orders through school, and even tried e-readers. No luck. She still has not found the book or genre that sparks an interest in reading chapter books.

Graphic novels are an entirely different topic. She can’t put these books down. She has read and reread titles like Smile, Best Friends, Real Friends, and Guts. Just this weekend I had to ask her to put a book down during dinner; it was a graphic novel. Later that night I found her asleep in bed with the book still open.

My daughter asleep in the middle of her fifth reading of Best Friends.

Research supports the idea that graphic novels help reach reluctant readers. The combination of pictures, graphics, and fewer words is appealing to students who don’t enjoy traditional texts as much. They also help with comprehension, critical thinking skills, and vocabulary acquisition.

But what about the reading level in these books? Certainly they can’t challenge students the same way a traditional text does. Can they? Research out of the University of Oregon has shown that graphic novels are not necessarily easier to read despite their format. According to the study “comic books average 53.5 rare words per thousand.” That number outpaces children’s books (30.9) and even inches ahead of adult books (52.7).

The topics students encounter in graphic novels go far beyond Garfield’s basic fascination with lasagna. In one of my daughter’s favorite graphic novels, Smile, the main character feels self-conscious after she is forced to wear headgear, braces, and even an appliance with false teeth, following an accident. This all happens while she is trying to navigate friendships and make her way through middle school. In the end, the reader learns that it doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside, but it’s who you are on the inside that really counts. That’s definitely a lesson I want me daughter to learn regardless of the format of the text.

So what did I say to the parents back at the conference? The same thing I say to my daughter. I want students to love reading. If he’s found a text he loves to read, then let him get lost in that book, regardless of what it looks like.

The Idiom Lesson

A few years ago, I was talking to a colleague about a student who struggled to stay on task and consistently focused throughout the day. We’ve all had students like that. They are easily distracted and have trouble even staying seated for more than five minutes.

As I was talking my colleague began to smile. “What?” I asked.

“Keep teaching and you’ll be surprised how much they’re still absorbing.” I looked at her unconvinced. She continued to tell me a story about a former student. In the middle of a lesson, the student, we’ll call him Billy, would often wandered around the room.

After numerous attempts to get Billy seated, she decided to let him move around the room for the remainder of her idiom lesson. Idioms are phrase whose meaning is different from the literal meaning (i.e. in a pickle, put your foot in your mouth).

She was almost through the mini-lesson on idioms when Billy started to turn the classroom water fountain off and on. The teacher tried to ignore him, but other students were visibly distracted.

She walked back to him, positive he hadn’t heard a single word of the lesson, and said, “Billy, I know it is hard for you to stay in your seat for the entire lesson. I often let you go get a drink and take some movement breaks, but your behavior is really distracting to your peers.” She admittedly used a poor choice of words as she continued, “Not only are your classmates having a hard time concentrating, but, honestly, it’s driving me up a wall.”

Billy looked at her and smiled. “That’s an idiom.”

“What?” She was baffled by his response.

“You said ‘driving me up a wall.’ That’s an idiom. It means it’s driving you crazy,” Billy explained matter-of-factly.

The teacher simply smiled and said, “Absolutely right, Billy. That’s an idiom. How about you come back and join the lesson.”

Billy came back to his seat, and she always remembered that learning doesn’t always look same for all students. To make a long story short, Billy learned about idioms and the teacher learned a lesson she would never forget. It was as if that lesson killed two birds with one stone.

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – The overall health of teachers is so important. We work in a very emotionally, physically, and mentally demanding field. It is critical that we take care of our bodies and minds in order to better take care of our students. So I was doing some digging for the best exercises and workouts. I love running but know that the impact is not great for your body. I found an interesting article which outlines exercises to do at every age group. For example, they recommend boot camp in your 20’s, high-intensity interval training in your 30’s, and running in your 40’s. Guess I don’t have to stop running quite yet!

2 – An article from The University of Virginia really caught my attention. It is a Q&A with NCTM President and UVA professor Dr. Samuel Braley Gray. He outlines what effective math teaching looks like in our schools, touches on some inequities in math education, and even talks about why children should use their fingers in math. (That last point alone got me wondering why we would encourage students to use printed ten frames, but discourage them from using their fingers – which are ten frames.) What really struck me was what Dr. Gray said about the effective ways to teach math. “These ideas are a shift from focusing on memorization. Mathematics is more than getting an answer quickly. Effective mathematics teaching engages students in explaining why their answers make sense and why the strategy they used is appropriate.” Well said, Dr. Gray!

3 – Last week I chose something lighthearted as my third point for the week. I’ll keep that trend going this week. Two ridiculously cute boys show up to a Canadian airport to pick up their grandmother. The boys decide to play a trick on grandma and dress up in full T-Rex costumes. Grandma, as grandmas always seem to do, was one step ahead of the boys. She appeared wearing… a full T-Rex costume of her own. The video is well worth the 2:29 of your time and will definitely put a smile on your face.

What Should We Eat?

What should we eat? That’s a question I never really seem to be able to answer. Usually I fall into paralysis by analysis and just eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. I’m pretty much a novice when it comes to understanding diet and nutrition. Honestly, in my early 20’s I would drink a Coca-Cola for breakfast on the way into work. Not in addition to anything of substance. A can of Coke was my entire breakfast. So clearly I had a lot to learn.

My father used to always tell me, “Wait until you turn 30. That wonderful metabolism will slow down in a hurry.” Thankfully, the turn wasn’t as dramatic as he implied, but I did start to pay more attention to how I was treating my body.

I started reading about nutrition and wellness a little more. The more I read, the more confused I became. It seemed like everything I read contradicted the last article. Eat this… no, that’s bad for you, eat this… no wait, that might be bad for you if you’re over thirty… you should eat meat with every meal… no, don’t eat meat at all… wait, you can eat meat, but only if it grass fed and free of antibiotics… on second thought, you can only eat chicken that listened to classical music and did pilates twice a week prior to the butcher… Ugh! It was utterly confusing.

Then somebody told me about Food Rules by Michael Pollan. It is an extremely quick read that tries to unpack some of the confusion around eating and nutrition. The first sentence of the introduction says, “Eating in our time has gotten complicated – needlessly so, in my opinion.” He was reading my mind!

Food Rules is broken into three parts: Part I- What should I eat? Part II – What kind of food should I eat? Part III – How should I eat it? In each section, Pollan gives very practical advice that is easy to understand. Each tip is accompanied by a brief, often one paragraph, explanation of the suggestion. Here are my ten favorites:

Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize.
Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human being would keep in their pantry. (Xanthan gum, anyone?)
Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce. (Boys and girls, can you say “Xanthan gum?”)
Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
Stop eating before you’re full.
Eat when you’re hungry, not when you are bored.
Buy smaller plates and glasses.
Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does. (No hotdogs off the rollers at the gas station. That would have been shocking to my twenty-year-old self.)
Break the rules once in a while.

There are so many wonderful thoughts in this book, and Pollan presents them all in a way that is easy to understand and hard to forget. For a person like me, it was the perfect place to start thinking about what I was putting in my body.

Pollan shares seven words he believes are the answer to that incredibly complex questions of what to eat: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

I try to think about these seven words as much as possible. It’s hard, especially when I walk into the faculty room to a table overflowing with donuts and other baked goods. There’s got to be some Xanthan gum in something on that table. Sometimes I follow the rules; sometimes I break them. At least I’m thinking about food rules at all. That’s got to count for something, right?

Vocabulary

Today I was reading a text with my students and wanted to preview some of the vocabulary. I decided to use a graphic organizer with a “Prediction” and a “It Means…” column. Students would make predictions about the meaning of each word, and then we would talk about the actual meaning.

Before students started, we had a conversation about the importance of trying to make your best guess based on what is known about the word, or its parts, but that it was okay for your prediction to be incorrect. We also talked about strategies that would help predict what the word might mean – word parts, hearing the word used before, etc.

After the three minutes I gave students to make predictions, we whipped around the room and listened to a few predictions for each word. We talked about how students got the prediction and then shared the meaning of the word. Students added the meaning to their “It Means…” column. What was really valuable was the conversation that happened after students made the prediction.

One of the words was disassemble. A student said his prediction was, “take apart.” I asked him if he’d ever seen this word before and he said no. He said, “I knew if you assemble something you put it together – like ‘some assembly required’ on commercials. So, I guessed the dis- meant to do the opposite, so I guessed that dis… assemble meant the opposite, take apart.” He even added the pause between the dis- and assemble. I couldn’t have asked for a better response, and part of me wanted to let him finish teaching the lesson.

This was a very simple way to preview the vocabulary. Students were engaged because they wanted to see if their predictions were right, and the rich conversation made the time spent extremely valuable.

As I said, these words were preselected, but choosing which words to teach is critical. We can’t teach all the word which might be unknown to students. So, how do we know which words to teach? Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan broke vocabulary words into a 3-tier system:

Tier One – Words used everyday which require little instruction (building, car, parking lot)
Tier Two – Words are high frequency academic language used across domains (formulate, analyze, specify)
Tier Three – Words specific to a field of study (denominator, insulator, legislature)

The biggest impact comes from teaching the Tier Two words because they are used across content areas, but we also need to teach the Tier Three words within units of study. Teaching prefixes and suffixes also has an enormous impact because knowing one prefix or suffix can unlock so many words. For example, our discussion of dis- meaning “not” or “opposite of” lead to a conversation about other words with the same prefix – disapprove, dissatisfied, etc.

After you’ve chosen the best words to teach, you need to determine the best way to teach them. One strategy in Robert Marzano’s Vocabulary for the Common Core is Six-Step Process for Vocabulary Instruction:

Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.
Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.
Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the term or phrase.
Engage students in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks.
Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.
Involve students in games that allow them to play with terms.

There are tons of resources out there with ideas for vocabulary activities. What are some of the strategies that you use in your classroom?

How to Increase Positivity

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
Abraham Lincoln

This quote always makes me think of how looking at something from a different perspective can help us see the positives in almost anything. (There’s some debate as to whether Honest Abe really said it, but it’s still a good quote.) Recently I was talking to a colleague about fostering positivity in our work, personal lives, and relationships. She shared The No Complaining Rule by John Gordon with me and said it had some great ideas about being more positive. She was right.

There are many wonderful ideas in this book, but one that stuck out to me was the No Complaining Card. The card has three strategies to create more positivity in your life.

The But –> ____ Positive Technique
Focus on “Get To” instead of “Have To”
Turn Complaints into Solutions

I’ve already found myself using some of these strategies in my personal and professional life. Over Christmas Break I had an eight-hour trip in the car. I was able to use the But–> ____ Positive Technique to make the trip more positive. Instead of thinking about the negatives of sitting in the car, I thought, “I don’t like sitting in the car for eight hours but I’m grateful I have all this time to listen to an audio book.”

It has also helped with areas like exercise. Focusing on “Get To” instead of “Have To” is especially helpful for me. There have been times where I said, “I have to go for a run.” Now, I’ve started saying, “I get to go for a run.” This one is especially powerful for me because I wasn’t able to run for three years because of a hip injury. I didn’t get to run for that entire time, so it is powerful and motivating to think that I get to run now.

Turn Complaints into Solutions doesn’t imply that complaining is eliminated entirely. The idea is to eliminate mindless complaining, which doesn’t serve a purpose. Instead, focus on justified complaining which move towards finding solutions to problems. A mindless complaint might be nobody around here understands me. A justified complaint might be I need to find more ways to effectively communicate with my coworkers.

This is not a book written specifically for educators, but the principles certainly apply to educators and the classroom. I reflected on each strategy and how it could be used in education.

The But –> ____ Positive Technique – I can’t believe I’m getting another student on my roster, but this is an opportunity to impact another student.
Focus on “Get To” instead of “Have To” – It is easy to say, “I have to cover cafeteria/recess duty.” Instead say, “I get to spend time with students outside of the classroom and continue to build strong relationships in a new setting.”
Turn Complaints into Solutions – A mindless complaint might be, “These students just don’t get this!” A justified complaint would look more like, “What steps do I need to take to help my students understand this material?”

This isn’t to say these three strategies will make everything magically better, but hopefully they’ll help us see more roses in the thorn bush.

Start With the Answer

My students have been working hard this year to improve as problem solvers. We consistently take time to talk about what makes effective problems solvers and practice the skill of problem solving. Last week I talked about the Three Reads strategy we use in our classroom.

Another strategy I like is giving students the answer and having them create the problem. Recently I gave my students three prompts:

Write a division problem where the quotient would be 6r3.
Write a division problem where the answer would be 5 1/3.
Write a division problem where the quotient would be 7r3 but a mathematician would add one to the quotient to report the answer as 8.

Students had the option to brainstorm with a partner before writing. Each student had to create their own problem. My goal was to get students to think about the structure of math problems – narrative and expository text combined.

One of the first things I noticed was students struggled to create the complex narrative structure that exists in most fourth grade word problems. This made me wonder if one of the obstacles for young mathematicians is they struggle with the narrative component of a word problem.

Most of the problems students initially wrote for #2 were similar to this: There are are 16 cookies for 3 kids. How many cookies does each person get? These problems lacked the character names and any extraneous information that often appears in rigorous problems. They also lacked the need for multi-step problem solving.

The conversations with students after they wrote their problems was wonderful. I had some of the students go into their math books and look at similar division word problems. This helped them better understand the structure. Other students practiced writing some problems with me. In both cases, we talked about the “story” at the beginning of problems with characters and a scenario which creates the necessity to solve a math equation. One student actually said, “Ahhh!” The lightbulb went off.

This exercise made me realize the value of students looking at math problems to analyze the structure of how a problem is put together instead of trying to solve it. All of the problems we revisited had already been completed, so the student could focus on how the problem was written.

It’s another tool in the problem solving toolbox which I hope will continue to grow for me and my students.

Be Somebody’s Mrs. Davis

A few years ago I was sitting at my daughter’s swim lesson and struck up a conversation with a very nice lady sitting next to me. She told me she was a retired teacher, and we shared stories about life in the classroom. I told her I switched professions because I wanted to make a difference.

What made me think of this encounter was an article I read recently about the importance of teacher-student relationships. I could tell in that brief interaction that this woman was a phenomenal teacher and probably had life-changing relationships with students. I wasn’t really sure how I knew that, but I did. We’ll get back to her in a minute.

Recently a colleague asked if I could touch base with one of her students. She told me he could use another positive relationship at school. So, eventually this student started coming over to my room at the end of the day to play chess with me. He didn’t know how to play, so we used the beginner’s board pictured at the top of the post.

The first few times we played, we barely talked. I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to talk or was just using all his energy to learn the game. He kept coming over to my room at the end of the day, so I figured he was enjoying the time. After a couple weeks he started to talk more during our matches. He would wave to me in the hallway and even stop by in the morning to say hello. Then one day, I was in the cafeteria, and he came all the way across the room to give a fist bump. He had a huge smile on his face and said, “Hi, Mr. Rashid.” Maybe our simple 5 minutes of chess at the end of the day meant more to him than I realized.

I don’t just value student-teacher relationships because I’ve read the research showing their importance. I value student-teacher relationships because I know first hand how important those relationships are to a struggling student.

I moved around a lot as a kid – four elementary schools between kindergarten and fifth grade. It was tough, and the last move was halfway through fifth grade. We moved from a community that I absolutely loved and was devastated to leave. The last half of fifth grade in my new school felt like wearing a pair of shoes that didn’t fit.

Over the summer I was pretty down about returning to school and was dreading the first day of sixth grade. Then, I walked into Mrs. Davis’s sixth grade class at Paxtang Elementary School. To say Mrs. Davis had a greater impact on my life than any teacher I’ve ever had would be a colossal understatement. I can think of only a handful of people who have had a greater impact on my life, like my parents, wife, and daughter. In fact, Mrs. Davis is one of only four people who called me Michael. I prefer Mike, but I didn’t mind. It became common, even comfortable, to hear her call me that for the better part of a year.

Mrs. Davis made me feel at home in my new school, in my new community. She was always so caring and compassionate. She knew school wasn’t a strength for me and always made me feel supported and successful around other students.

There is one day in her class I will always remember. I was extremely nervous about an assignment we were completing. I’m not sure how she sensed that anxiety, but she came over and asked me if I was okay. I reluctantly told her I was nervous and not sure I was capable of completing it. I can still feel the sensation in my eyes as they started to water. Mrs. Davis gave me a hug and said, “Michael, I know that you can do this. I will never ask you to do anything I know you can’t do.” I’m sure to her it was just one of the many things she did over her career to make a student feel comfortable, but to me it was the most important thing any teacher ever said to me. From that moment, and for the first time in school, I believed in myself academically. To this day, more than thirty years later, when anything is academically challenging, I hear “Michael, I know you can do this.”

That’s what I hope to be for students – somebody who believes in them. Somebody who inspires them. Somebody who makes them believe anything is possible, just like Mrs. Davis did for me.

Which brings us back to the pool and my daughter’s swim lesson. I finally asked the lady sitting next to me where she taught. She mentioned some schools where she was a teacher and administrator. Then she smiled at me and said, “And I taught sixth grade at Paxtang Elementary School.” My mouth practically dropped to the wet, tiled floor. “It’s great to see you again, Michael.”

I wish I had told Mrs. Davis right then how much she did for me and meant to me. Then again, I have a feeling she already knows.

What Do You Need at This Moment?

Last week I posted my One Word for 2020 – intentional. It seemed the perfect tool to help guide and focus me this year. Just a few days later I read a blog post by Mandy Froehlich titled “Why I’m Not Choosing A #OneWord.”

In years past she chose one word for the year because that was what she needed at that time. Ms. Froehlich didn’t chose a word this year because she’s “doing different things that work for [her] at this time and that is totally okay.”

She shares an alternative idea to the #OneWord which is a 3-2-1-2-3 pattern:

3 Places I want to go
2 Ways I can help others
1 Thing I want to get better at
2 Things I am looking forward to
3 New things I want to try

I love the idea of a 3-2-1-2-3 pattern, but it’s the reasoning for her change that really caught my attention – doing what works for you at that time. We should all do what works for us, and our students, at any particular time. It’s easy to get caught up in what others are doing, but that might not be the best thing for you at that moment. It’s important to be intentional with what we’re doing in our personal lives, our classrooms, with relationships, and with our downtime. That’s why I chose intentional as my #OneWord, but there’s a good chance I’ll think about the 3-2-1-2-3 a little more as well.