Spiraling and the CCSS

Spiral when used as a noun:

•  the path of a point in a plane moving around a central point while continuously receding from or approaching it
• a continuous spreading and accelerating increase or decrease

Spiral when used as an adjective:

• winding around a center or pole and gradually receding from or approaching it
• of or relating to the advancement to higher levels through a series of cyclical movements

As teachers, our goals are all based on one thing- to help our students go to college or have a great career after they graduate. No matter if we teach first grade or twelfth, we want to aid our students in being successful.  Yet when I have conversations with professors at colleges or business leaders I tend to hear the same things: “These students are not prepared for college.” “They don’t know how to form opinions on topics independently and seem to wait for me to give answers or do the work for them.” “How do they not know how to take notes?” “Why will they not follow simple directions?” The list goes on and on.  I want to scream at theses professors, “What do you mean they aren’t ready for college?!”  All I can do is scratch my head because I know that I have been doing my best to teach my students to be independent thinkers, spent time with them on different strategies to use to take notes and taught until I was exhausted… so what is really going on?

The Common Core State Standards were written to with the goal to make college and career ready students upon graduation. Don’t you love that? I just want to stand up and say, “And what, exactly, were the other standards written for? To prepare them for light saber fighting?!” The CCSS ensure that each student will graduate with the skills, strategies, vocabulary and concepts which will help them transition easily into their next path whether it be to college or to a career. The standards were created from the top down meaning that the creators looked at what would make our students successful in college as well as in the work force and spiraled the standards so that knowledge is built from year to year with the end in mind. The level of difficulty within the standards is embedded in the content of each succeeding grade-specific standard. Take a look at this… 

See what it looks like? You can analyze the same standards from kindergarten all the way to the twelfth grade and see how the difficulty increases with each. Notice the wording in the standards.  In kindergarten they are already asked to form an opinion about something and show that opinion through drawing, dictation and writing. As the standard progresses through elementary school, students are building on that concept of supporting an opinion. What happens when you get to the sixth grade though?  The opinions progress to arguments. Students have to know what a claim is now and support their arguments with claims. Now jump to the twelfth grade. The standard is specific in that students have to have precise, knowledgeable claim(s), establish the significance of the claim(s)…. and so on. As the students move along through the course of learning, they study the same concepts each year but the expectations increase in increments of complexity and sophistication to ensure that they are mastering the skill.

To me, this is a comfort. No matter where you are on this course of learning you have an impact on each child’s learning and look how many partners you have in this that are helping you. Kindergarten teachers probably have it the worst… they have to get the party started!! By building our students’ knowledge bank every year we are ensuring that they are ready for the next step whether they choose to go to college or start their career right after they graduate. It is a comfort most of all because we have focused on a major idea for 13 years and know that our students have mastered it. We have pushed them along a little at a time with baby steps that ensured that they have mastery. I can’t wait to hear what those professors and business leaders have to say in a few years!

What are your thoughts on the spiraling of the standards? How do you think this will cause us to adapt our teaching? Can’t wait to hear from you!

Framing our thinking about Common Core State Standards

I was introduced to this wonderful video featuring Sarah Brown Wessling and wanted to share it with you. Watch it first and then come back for some thoughts!!

Sarah does an amazing job at showing us how we can begin structuring our thinking about the Common Core State Standards. Summarizing this video would not do it justice at all so I just want to discuss some of the highlights (at least to me) and then get your thoughts. The first thing that she talks about are ways in which we can frame how we look at the CCSS.

 Three Ways to Frame Our Thinking: 

1. That we recognize that sometimes we have to frame it in observation.  

2. That we also contextualize our thinking and what it means.

3. That we then begin designing and building our curriculum. 

I love these. They are such simple things that we can definitely take to heart and the fact that they follow my favorite policy... KISS (keep it simple, stupid)! Sometimes we get so bogged down in the various lists of things that we should do that our list takes over our life and becomes overwhelming to us. By having three main areas to look at and use to structure our thinking.  

She goes on to give so many golden nuggets of information that I couldn't begin to write about them all. This blog post would be forever long. One of the most important that she talks about were the patterns that she notices in the CCSS and how they are shift our focus from previous standards. Those are worth looking at.  

Patterns in CCSS

  

* There will be much more non-fiction than ever before.

* We will focus on writing argumentatively instead of persuasively 

* Integration is key! We WILL NOT teach strands of literacy in isolation 

* The student must see the text in conversation with each other 

    (I love that she pointed out that it is not enough to read the book, take the quizzes, and then do the test anymore. That to me felt like a "Duh!" statement because I am constantly bringing in poems that relate to the theme of the novel or a video about something that the novel talks about that the students are unfamiliar with or something else. Does anyone else do that?) 

* There is a great increase in text complexity

* Literacy is a COLLECTIVE responsibility

Those things make me more excited about teaching the CCSS because they do lend us to have much more freedom within our teaching and bring so much more into our classroom that maybe we were hesitant to do before. Sarah tells us that we have to be intellectual risk takers. I love that title. In order for us to bridge between tasks and learning, just as she mentions, we have to have gentle failure. And here is the tough part for some... we have to do it in front of our students. We have to show them that it is okay to not get it the first time and how we worked through the process to understand. 

Do you understand everything about the CCSS after reading it through one time? 

Could you pass a test on it?

Of course not! Who could?! We have to show our students that it is okay to mess up and try again. My students know that I have absolutely no shame in showing them how I mess up all the time. They love to see it! I will admit that I had a very hard time with it at first because, really, who wants to show their flaws?! However, as my lessons progressed, I saw that my students are reading and willing to mess up and then process through it. Those are some of my favorite days! 

There are so many other things I could talk about from this video but I want to mention the story about she and her daughter playing school. Did that rattle anyone else? Oh goodness, it did me. First of all, what does my child think I do all day (and I would ask her but she is in the bed so I will ask later and let you know) and then this question: 

Are you just playing the game of school? 

That is the question that I want to leave you with to think on. Let me know what your thoughts are from Sarah Brown Wessling's video. Did anything make you pause to reflect or stick out to you? I would love to hear from you! 

PS:  Don't forget to follow the blog either through the email sign up or through your Google feed!!

Collaboration is Key... Part 1 of who knows how many

I consider myself to be a very lucky lady on many levels. I have an amazing family who definitely keep me grounded, a phenomenal job that I honestly look forward to going to everyday (some days I am looking forward to it because it is another day closer to a holiday, but you know how that goes) and I am most lucky in the fact that I work with amazing teachers and staff across my district. I work in a smaller district (We have two middle schools which feed into our high school) so we are a close knit group. Most of the teachers in our district were once students in those same classrooms. I, however, was not one of the “locals” when I took the job at our middle school.

I went to one of the two very large high schools in my district, but I knew pretty much everyone. When I was asked to come in and interview for the job at my school, this thought ran through my head, “Oh no! I don’t know anyone and if I get the job then what am I going to do?” To those who know me you are probably wondering why I would even begin to think that. As my husband will tell you, I have no problem talking to anyone, anywhere. If there is someone to chat with I will! (My three year old little boy is just like me and when we are together it is double the trouble!!)  But I was worried. I knew that this was a tight knit, wonderful community and I didn’t want to not fit in. After I was offered the job, and accepted, the principal called me to let me know that he was not going to be able to go to a conference and asked if I would like to go. He said that a few of the other teachers were going and that it would be a great opportunity for me to get to know some of them. I said yes immediately.

When I pulled into the parking lot, the nerves set in because I was about to meet my very first teacher cohorts. Would they like me? Would they think I was young and naïve? Would they look down on me because I wasn’t from the community? All these things ran through my head as I watched two cars pull in. Little did I know that those ladies who I was getting ready to meet would become some of my very best friends within the school walls and outside of those walls.

Needless to say, I had absolutely nothing to worry about. Their smiles began magnificent friendships and some of the best collaboration a first year teacher could ever ask for.  Over the years we worked together to create amazing units for novels that included a relay race to show the differences between the Greasers and the Socs in The Outsiders, we created podcasts, movies and much more with the technology at our school and we were able to have someone to go to when we just didn’t know what to do when our students weren’t getting it. What is amazing is, this is going to be my ninth year teaching and both of those ladies retired last year so you can see that there was quite an experience gap amongst us. To say I am going to be lost this coming year without them is an understatement. I learned quite a bit from both of them, but the biggest thing that I learn from both of them is that COLLABORATION IS KEY.

It could have been easy for both of them to look at me and tell me that while my ideas were “pretty good,” they had been teaching whatever it was for 20 plus years and we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. But they didn’t. They listened, gave their input, we helped each other work through the kinks and then we revisited to see what we liked, didn’t like, and what we needed to fix before next time. I am sure that you are thinking of those people in your school that you collaborate with on a regular basis. It could be for planning, it could be for student concerns or it could be someone who you know you can go to so that you can bounce ideas off of to see what they think. My best friend teaches Science so when I go to her and am all excited about a lesson, she patiently listens and nods her head and then gives me her honest thoughts on what she likes, doesn’t like or thinks that I may need to consider. It is nice to hear because, as an English teacher and all-things-books lover, I sometimes forget that there are others out there who aren’t quite as in love with the written word! (How dare they, right?)

With the Common Core State Standards, it is going to be imperative that we collaborate with one another. Our community of collaborators is growing though. We now have 46 states which have adopted the standards which makes our network that much larger. Can you imagine all of the great ideas we are going to get from each other? Our classrooms are going to be even better than they ever have.  There are so many teachers across our country with amazing ideas and now we get to hear their ideas, share our own and create learning environments for our students which encompass the same things that our sister schools across the country do.

One of the best things I ever did was get involved with NCTE. I joined four years ago and have been to the conference for the past two years. I am sad to say that I will not be able to go this year (budgets are so tight which we all know) and it is not because I want to be out of school. NO. It is because I will not be able to hang out with my teacher friends that I have formed close relationships over the past few years. We are spread out (literally) across the United States and luckily we have Facebook to help us stay in contact! They are my community. I have gotten so many wonderful ideas from each one of them (one of them is a…. gasp… MATH teacher!! Love you Sandi!) and will continue to go to them when I am trying to figure something out.

I am taking on a new job this year and will be focusing on the at-risk readers. I am lucky that one of my very good friends Kellee is on that same path with me, only she lives in Florida. When I was thinking about taking the job, I chatted her and asked her questions, bounced ideas and just needed an ear and she was able to give me insight and encouragement when I needed it. (By the way, Kellee and our other friend Jen have an amazing blog that aids us in using mentor texts to promote literacy. Check it out here) 

Collaboration is key. You will hear me say that time and time again especially with our new Common Core State Standards. We have to be on board with this and we have to collaborate to ensure that we are doing the best that we can. We cannot do this alone. Why would you want to? By thinking that we can do it alone and that we don’t need to incorporate anyone else’s ideas or help into our classroom is selfish. Those ideas are going to help reach students who may need the information presented to them in a new way (even though we have done it 14 other ways) and then they have that light bulb moment.

Here is your challenge this week… find a new person to collaborate with this week from another state. There are plenty of teacher organizations, blogs, chat rooms and so much more out there. Use those resources and let me know who you meet! 

 

Keep those creative juices flowing!

The principal walks in with stacks of copies, books and a smile on their face. They neatly set everything out maintaining the smile despite the fact that the grumbling has begun. “Great. I wonder what we are going to have to do this time,” Sally whispers to her cohort Jill. “I don’t know, but ten bucks says that it involves more paperwork,” pipes in Dan as he pulls out his IPad to take notes on. Everyone knows, though, that he’s really playing Words with Friends with Pete who is in a faculty meeting at their sister school across town. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the principal begins, again, maintaining that smile. “I have something for you and I know that you are going to just love it.” The word love is emphasized as if that is going to ease the teachers into yet another strategy, piece of paper or requirement that has been passed to them to give to the teachers. The principal knows that it is going to cause an uproar so they are bound and determined to make it the best it can be. “We are going to begin using something new this year,” they continue just as the grumbling really sets in from the teachers and they know, then, that it is going to be a long year. 

Ever been there? Have you ever sat and wondered, “And whose grand idea was it to add on another piece of paper or change my methods of teaching for the seventh year in a row?” As teachers, we have all been there, done that. I am going into my ninth year teaching and I know that every year something new comes down the pipe for us to learn or to implement into our classroom. A new strategy to teach, another manual to read on how to teach something even better than we ever have before or even a new video series to watch from a teacher who is doing amazing things, but with a very different make up of students, a larger budget and a community which supports them. While all of those are great, it seems to discredit what we have accomplished over our career thus far.

And now we have something that not only are we going to implement, but so are 45 other states; The Common Core State Standards. I hear your grumbles and believe me, I have my own. There is an element of fear connected to that phrase, I believe, because we are all worried that our creativity will be stifled and we will be unable to bring the one of a kind lessons to our classroom because they won’t fit in with these standards. Let me give you some reassurance right here and now… that is not true at all and never will be.

We are teachers. I truly believe that when you look up the word teacher you see the following as synonyms: 

Unique     Creative       Planner     Flexible      Giver 

There are many more that go with those (including tired!), but those are some that encompass who we are as teachers. We pride ourselves in creating lessons that shine light on our students and show them just how cool it is to read an article on how an increase in lobsters of all colors are being caught and be able to pull from that to back up our opinion on how cell phones and other technology are making it easier to show these lobsters and that is why we are hearing more about it. (This is the article I read, by the way, that got me thinking about that lesson plan ) We want to be able to be creative in our approach to teaching various concepts and the idea of changing how we teach to implement these standards is scary. 

It’s okay to admit you are scared. I did… and I survived.

But there is really no reason to be scared. Yes, things are going to change. But they are not going to be life altering changes. What I love about the CCSS is that they are calling for us to use our creativeness in new ways. Instead of teaching things in isolation (i.e. having one unit on poetry, testing our students on it and then reviewing it right before standardized testing) we now are going to spiral everything. For instance, we will start with an essential question or it could be a piece of poetry that will be our fulcrum text and then have multiple pieces of literature that we teach with throughout the unit (these will be our context texts and texture texts). I will post more about planning later though. I love that we will be able to show our students the relationships between the pieces and use them to teach. Some of us are not as confident when it comes to teaching certain things (for me, it is poetry) and this will alleviate some of that stress. We will be able to use many pieces to teach one concept and show our creativity through those texts. How great is that?! 

While there are numerous posts that I will be writing on many things concerning the Common Core State Standards, I want to assure you first and foremost that your creativity is not going to go anyway. In fact, it is going to be utilized in ways that you have yet to imagine. Some of your best lessons are yet to come with these standards, and I can’t wait to hear about them. 

Pardon the dust...

I am getting this up and going as soon as possible. I have been doing some great studying and digging through the Common Core State Standards and can't wait to get it started!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about something, shoot me an email and I will get right on it. (randomchalktalk@gmail.com)

See you soon!