Good For You!

I am always caught off guard when I hear my words coming from the mouths of my students. It makes me stop and think. What messages am I sending? How do my words sound in the ears of 6 year olds?

Last week I was working with a guided reading group. After reading together, we were getting ready to do a little word work. As my hands moved over the sections of the storage box, fingers dipping in to scoop out the needed letters, I was thinking aloud.

"Hmm...let's see, we want to build the word here, so we'll need h."  I plopped a letter h in front of each child at the table. "Oh, and r; we'll need that too." Hands reached out to take the letter. My finger tapped my chin as I thought. "Now let me see...what else? Oh yes--e! We are going to need some of those! Here you are--we have all the letters we need."

A. looked up, his bright eyes beaming right into mine as he cried, "good for you!"

His face was alight with enthusiasm and sincere pride in my accomplishment and he laughed along with me. It still makes me laugh. But it also makes me think.

I am pretty sure I have used that phrase (or some variation of it) every day this year. It is almost without exception accompanied by some sort of specific description of what I noticed.
"You figured that out all by yourself--good for you!"
"I see that you are making your illustrations show what happened--good for you!"
"Good for you--you noticed it didn't match so you went back to fix it."
"I heard you say sorry even though it was an accident--good for you!"

Each day I try to encourage the kids to try, to figure things out, to do the right thing. We talk a lot about how being smart isn't mostly about knowing stuff--it's about noticing and thinking and working hard and learning more. And I try to make sure that I catch them in the act. I think there is power in letting kids know that I notice when they do these things. It's important they get that encouragement--a "good for you!" for not only successful actions, but also for effort or improvement. Not random praise, but specific acknowledgment.

During that reading group, my thinking aloud about what letters were needed was intended to get the kids thinking about the letters in a particular word, but what A. heard was someone thinking through something and figuring it out. And in his mind, that deserved a heartfelt "good for you!"

Hearing my words come from A. tells me that it matters to them that I do this. It tells me that they are starting to notice when someone is thinking and that they recognize it as something important not only for others, but for themselves. And that's a message I'm glad to send. Good for us!

These Rainbows Are Making Me Crazy

At the start of this year, there was an epidemic of rainbows in my room--I'm not sure how else to describe it. I have nothing against rainbows. I get excited when I see them in real life, but I will admit to being somewhat less than thrilled to see rainbows on page after page after page of student writing. Not because I'm against rainbows, but because the rainbows didn't really belong there.

The kids have been writing since day one, and for the most part, they are writing stories and drawing pictures about things they have done or things they know a lot about...and in many of those drawings, there is a rainbow lurking somewhere. Sometimes the rainbow is front and center, arcing gracefully over the illustration showing when M. got her dog. Or maybe it's up in the corner, a spot of color to liven up W.'s writing about how to roller skate. In story after story and book after book, there were rainbows. Sometimes on every page. Sometimes in stories that take place completely inside. And the text? No mention of a rainbow anywhere.

I was going crazy trying to figure out why the rainbows were everywhere. These are kids that seem to know that the illustrations they create should match what they are trying to tell the reader, and in fact, when they are talking about or reading their writing, they never mention the rainbows. I was beginning to think maybe the rainbows weren't there at all and that I had developed some strange vision problem that superimposes rainbows on things.

Apparently there was a simpler explanation. It occurred to me that maybe I should ask the kids. When I did, I realized that maybe the answers shouldn't have surprised me as much as they did. Several kids said they like using all the colors when they make illustrations...and the illustration for the story didn't need them all so they added a rainbow. 
Oh dear. The crayons are new. Many of them do not have things like crayons and paper at home. They want to use all the colors. I should have seen that one coming, and the fix is easy. I simply planned to provide another time and place in our day where they can create rainbows or other drawings that use each and every color crayola has.


But most of the kids looked a little confused when I asked, almost like they were as surprised as I was by the rainbows' appearances in their stories. Kid after kid had no idea why he or she had included a rainbow. S. even said, "I just always put one in." 
After reflecting on it a bit, I realized that maybe I don't spend enough time at the start of the year talking about illustrations and how we can use them in our writing. After a week spent learning how to deliberately think about what to put in the illustration and how it helps show the reader what's happening and where it's happening and who was there, the rainbows started to fade. By the end of the week, they were gone, quietly and without a fight.

I'm pretty sure that the key was to focus on what does belong in illustrations--learning why we use them and how to think about it deliberately didn't really leave much room for random elements like rainbows. Though I don't know for sure, it is possible that if I had tried a no rainbow mandate things would not have gone so smoothly. Instead of the focus for kids being on what didn't belong, I chose to focus on what did belong--giving them something to include other than those mysteriously aggravating rainbows. I think it's that way with most things; if we want something to change, we probably should pour our energy into what we want to have happen so that kids know what is expected. Much more effective than putting the spotlight on what we hope goes away.


And when hearts begin randomly appearing in stories, I'll be ready.

The Buzz in My Room

It's all about the bees. Yep, bees--my kids are buzzing about bees.

In an earlier blog, I talked a bit about my goal of including more informational text in classroom this year. One purpose was to take advantage of kids' natural curiosity--to keep that sense of wonder about the world going strong...and maybe entice them to read and write a bit along the way. So when the kids kept returning to the books on insects and spiders and asking if I had more, I fell into the (Venus fly) trap.

I was certain the fact that my friend Miss M. has a tarantula in her classroom would completely grab their attention--and they were impressed. At the research center they recorded some questions for Miss M.'s class and we sent them off. But that was that--they are content to hear from her kids on this one.

Then little M. handed me a book about bees and  asked if I'd read it. I will admit that inside, I heaved a little sigh--insects are not my favorite topic. Outwardly, I smiled and told him of course I would. We spent a little time each morning last week reading that book--just 2-4 pages a day. We talked. We looked at the photos and drawings and diagrams. We reread parts. They begged for more, and every day as they entered the room, I'd have to reassure each and every one of them that yes, I would be reading more of the bee book today. On the day we got a new student, the kids caught her up before we continued. They LOVED that book--and the bees. There was an almost palpable disappointment when we came the end. One little sweetie moaned, "isn't there any more?"

Not only are they still talking about that book, but it has a place of honor on the counter in the research center--right next to the large plain paper and blank booklets they requested I provide so those who wish to can make books or posters about bees. Or just write and draw what they remember or thought was really cool. They are noticing and sharing photos of bees and sections about bees in other books. It's almost as if they've developed a little crush on bees.

The really cool thing is that it's working--my master plan, that is. I trusted that if I deliberately created the environment and intentionally provided the opportunity, the kids' sense of curiosity would guide them to engaged reading and writing. I also noted an increased level of oral language--both in terms of the vocabulary (general and specific) they were using, and in the complexity of their asking and telling. The day one of my ELLs (English Language Learners) brought me a picture of a bee in a magazine saying, "look--you can see his proboscis sucking the nectar from the flower" I almost couldn't respond. She's six. She does not speak English at home.


Now, is every child in my room a total bee expert? No. But all of them have learned some stuff that they will likely remember and all of them spent a little more time purposefully talking about and reading informational text and many of them are writing as a direct result of our little study.

And you know what? I've decided that I'm pretty hooked on the bees too...they really are fascinating little things.

Tricky Teacher? Or Thinking Kids?

"You're trying to trick us!"
"I'm going to try to trick you--watch me closely."
"Be careful, they are trying to trick you here."

All things we've said or heard in our own classrooms and in the classrooms of others, right? I know I used to say things like this all the time in an effort to get kids to notice when I made a mistake or to get them to attend more closely to what we were doing. And they loved it--the idea of catching me as I tried to slip one by them.

But I've been rethinking this. Over the past few years, I've been invited by many teachers to come listen to and watch a struggling reader or group of readers to help figure out where things were getting muddled and help them sort it out. And you know what? Over and over I heard kids say things about the teacher trying to trick them or the author trying to trick them. I even had one boy look up at me once he was utterly mixed up and misreading and comment, "these things [books] are so hard...they never make any sense!"

Uh-oh.

So I began to think about it and realized that maybe I should rethink how I was trying to get kids to notice and attend closely. Of course, kids do get confused and mixed up all on their own, but maybe, just maybe I had been unintentionally causing them to think that I (or their books) was out to get them. I knew that was not the message I wanted to send--but what was?

What I really want is to have kids notice things, to monitor what they are doing (whether it's reading or math or whatever), and to figure things out. I need them to be engaged thinkers. That means a change in my language so that what I say matches what I am really trying to get.

So at the start of this year, when I first heard a gleeful, "you're trying to trick us!", I stopped the group immediately.
"No," I replied, taking time to make eye contact with each child, "no, I am not." Confused, somber silence. I went on. "My job is to help you learn to think--to notice things and to think. I am not trying to trick you. I am trying to make you think about it."

I was met with skeptical looks. They needed some time to mull that over. "Let's try again," I suggested, "and I bet this time, you'll notice something here we need to figure out." And they did.

Now I don't hear about teachers trying to trick kids, but I hear at least a couple times a day that I'm trying to make them think. I love it. Imagine hearing excited voices saying, "you are making us think!" and then settling in to do just that. Beautiful...and exactly what I had in mind.

Being Bold in Our Teaching

A writer friend of mine recently shared a quote about having the guts to write. When I read it, I immediately flashed back to a small group discussion during a training session I had with some teachers a couple of years ago. The training was on effective minilessons, and her group had read a couple of excerpts from Lucy Caulkins and Carl Anderson about the part of the lesson where we tell students what we're going to teach them in that lesson.

"Wow--that's huge," she commented. "I don't think I've ever been that bold--bold enough to say, today I'm going to teach you to do something. I have the feeling I should though." There was silence around the table as the others considered this.

We are teachers after all. We know that it's our job to teach the kids. But somehow this idea that we'd actually state for them that we are going to teach them to ________ felt pretty big. And it is significant.

Some other colleagues were recently discussing a district initiative that included making sure students know what the current learning goals are and what they are learning to do during lessons. To many in our district, this seems to be a little much for our youngest students. Others had already done this in some areas of their teaching but weren't really sure why they weren't doing it in all areas.

So why the big push to tell kids up front what we are going to teach them?

“When we are explicit with our students about the purpose behind our teaching and give them a window into our thinking about how this will support their reading development, it helps set them up for learning. Students do not need to spend the first five minutes (which may exceed their attention span!) trying to figure out what a lesson is about. They need to be explicitly told so they can set their mind to the topic at hand, activate their schema on that topic, and ready themselves to accept new knowledge.” Landrigan and Mulligan, 2008

When you read that, it seems pretty clear, right? It makes sense that when we are bold enough to tell students this is what I'm going to teach you, they know what to listen for--and maybe something in their brains will trigger them to call up any knowledge they already have about that topic. I'm not sure, but it seems like maybe that would make those mental hooks a little stickier too.

If that's not enough, consider what Robert Marzano has to say:“When students know what they are learning, their performance, on average, has been show to be 27 percentile points
Higher than students who do not know what they are learning.”

Wow. It's a startling enough finding to make me think it's more than worth the few seconds it takes in a lesson to state for kids exactly what they are learning. In this age of high stakes accountability, can we afford not to do this?

In our district, we have a fairly high percentage of English Language Learners (ELLs). In the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) training provided for our teachers, we are taught that lesson objectives should not only be posted in kid-friendly language, but that the purpose of doing so is to both allow students to know the direction of the lesson and to remind us of the lesson focus.

Ah...for those teachers who sometimes end a lesson thinking, "hm, that's not really where I intended to go with that" or who follow the kids' comments off into unrelated content, this could be a very effective and very simple way to stay focused on the lesson.

But I also think that last part is what causes some teachers--who up until now are thinking this all sounds right on--to pause for a minute. Wait. If we are going to tell the students what we are going to teach them, then we have to know what we are teaching. And be able to state it. In a way the kids understand. But consider this: if we don't know and can't say it in a way kids understand, how can we expect them to learn it?

So be bold in your teaching. Tell the kids what you are going to teach them. And then do it. After all, we are teachers.

Rockin' the Morning Message

My friend Mrs. S. works her morning message like no one I have seen. Sitting at the edge of her large group area along with her kindergartners, I was every bit as engaged as they were--but inside my head a little voice was asking, "and where have you been with this all these years?!"

Don't get me wrong--I've used morning messages for a long time. Every day. Posted right by the door. Read together as part of the morning meeting. But Mrs. S. does not stop there. What she does with a morning message is some of the most deliberate, engaging, powerful kind of teaching I have had the pleasure of observing. Watching her caused me to stop and really think about how I was using my morning message and where I was letting opportunities slip by me.

Lots of what she does is the stuff we do in shared reading--tracking left to right and top to bottom, 1-to-1 matching, and locating known words, letters or phonics patterns. And yes, I had done that with my morning messages. However, it's also important to consider our kids beyond this kind of learning. Stick with me on this--some of it will have you saying, "I know already!" but some of it just may help you think a little more deeply about some possibilities for your own morning messages.

Have you ever had your kids count letters? Words? Capital &/or lowercase letters? Ok, now consider having them count the spaces? At Mrs. S.'s school, spacing was an issue that kept cropping up in kids writing and we were trying to figure out how to get kids to use spaces. It occurred to us that maybe we should see if they noticed spaces in print....and they really struggled. All this can also help as kids learn the difference between things like words and letters, spaces and words, upper- and lowercase letters, or words and sentences (yes, you can count those too).

Now, how about if you have kids talk about which is more/less--the words or the letters? More/less (or greater than/less than) is a key math concept for my kids this grading period, so we've been comparing quantities of everything--even in our morning message. We record the numbers at the bottom of the message (writing numbers to 100 is a math goal for us) and practice saying something about the quantities using our math vocabulary, such as, "the number of words is less than the number of letters" or, "72 is more than 20".

And now there are kids who enter every morning and begin counting every possible category of letter/word/space in the message and report to me about which is more or less. The cool thing is that most of the kids doing this are the ones who need more practice counting, and they are doing it without my prodding. AND one day...a great day in my teaching life...we had counted the words and a little girl announced that if we counted letters there would be more letters than words, "because a letter is just a letter, but a word is a bunch of them together." Ta-da!

I also need to add that we don't just focus on print features and letters and high frequency words. I also stick stuff in that is intended to get them thinking about meaning. Sometimes I ask a question (related to a classroom event, something we are studying, etc) that requires them to understand what I am asking and then consider a response or that asks them to do something. We consider whether the message is all telling or if there is some asking. They love days with asking, because first graders thing that question marks are very cool. Even cooler than exclamation marks. My goal isn't just to have the kids notice the letters--I want them to notice what the message is about. If fact, if we are not doing that, there isn't much point in the rest.  

The morning message can also be a place to teach and practice early reading strategies. For example, Mrs. S. sometimes started her message with "Dear Kindergartners", but other days would use "Dear Friends" or something similar. Her kids were quick to realize the difference by using not only the first letter, but also the length of the word. My kids have learned to monitor their reading of the message because I may use "boys and girls" or "girls and boys" or even borrow from my friend and use "Dear friends".

The message is also a part of linking learning and thinking across our curriculum and putting it into a fairly authentic context. In our morning message, kids may use vocabulary, strategies, skills from math or language arts. They may be given or asked to consider information from science or social studies topics being studied. We talk about the message contents each day, which is an opportunity for oral language development.

Here is the really important stuff that Mrs. S. caused me to stop and consider:
The key to really using a morning message as teaching is to know your kids and deliberately think about opportunities for teaching and learning during this part of the day. Be purposeful in what you write and how you write it. Be alert to how you might include not only certain words or letters, but how you might link to other parts of your curriculum. Remember that this is reading material for your kids, so this is a chance to teach and guide the use of early reading strategies.

I knew that I had joined Mrs. S. in rockin' the morning message when I stood in the doorway and observed my kids entering and hurrying to huddle around the message--reading, counting, pointing things out, and talking to each other about it. They were using the math vocabulary, helped each other monitor and correct their reading, and reread to think about the content of the message...all part of recent teaching & learning in our room. And when we gathered on the carpet to read the message together, every single kid was engaged and interested and thinking.

Thank you Mrs. S.--I owe you one!

Why Centers Are Worth It

Centers (or workstations or managed independent learning or whatever you call it in your room). Just saying the word at the start of the year causes most teachers to take a slow, controlled breath. Or groan a little. It's difficult to get centers up and going in the classroom in a way that sets the stage for kids to engage independently in purposeful activities for the rest of the year. Difficult, but not impossible.

So why even bother?

•  Kids need a time and place to try out what they've been learning. A time after we've done the modeling and the shared practice and the guided practice to just do it on their own; to see for themselves what works and also to make a few mistakes, discover them and try again until they fix it up. Centers provide a time when kids can be mostly successful but still have a few problems to solve--on their own or with their peers. We want them to know they can do it without our help. Many experts would say this falls under the idea of gradual release of responsibility--helping kids move from a new idea or concept or strategy that they see someone else demonstrate to doing it alongside that person to doing it themselves with a little guided support to doing it on their own.

• Kids need time to learn with others. The social nature of learning is something we all talk about, but in many classrooms, kids don't get many chances to work with their peers--talking about what they are doing. The opportunities for oral language development abound during center time, when kids are talking to each other about what they are doing--using the language of the content and giving them a chance to explain to each other how to go about something. Teachers generally acknowledge that developing oral language is a huge need for many (or most!) of our kids, but often the structure of the school day does not allow for much oral language development. While recess and lunch times can offer chances for kids to talk to each other, they also need time to develop language skills related to the content and procedures of academic learning. Center time is a chance for kids to do most of the talking, and to do it without being prompted or guided by the teacher.

• Kids need to be actively engaged. Hands-on learning is not a new idea, and we've been hearing for years that we learn by doing. Centers require kids to be "doing". Engagement is a critical factor in learning and center time provides an opportunity for kids to engage in several types of activity. Center time is a chance for kids to experience several types of activity that engage several areas of the brain. We can also structure centers so that kids have choices in which activity they may do at each center, offering a couple of different ways to interact with the same content. Having choices gives kids a chance to have some control in their learning and usually results in higher levels of engagement.

• Kids need chances to engage in work at their own level. During center time, activities can be organized to provide varying levels of difficulty around the same content. Just as small group work allows teachers to provide differentiated instruction, centers can provide differentiated independent and peer-supported practice. We often use the term open-ended when referring to classroom activities, but most often this is in reference to kids having a choice of topic or accepted response. While this is certainly important, we could also consider it in terms of kids working at differing levels of difficulty or complexity. Center time can also allow kids who need more time practicing a skill or working with a concept to have that time, and provide a chance for kids ready to go beyond what was done in whole group instruction to do so.

• Teachers need to observe what kids can do without our help. We need to see what happens when we back off and let the kids do the things we've been teaching in large and small groups and what we've been doing together in shared settings. We need to know if kids are still successful when we take ourselves out of the interaction, whether or not they notice when they encounter difficulty (think self-monitoring!) and how they go about solving problems. Center time not only allows us to notice these things, but also to note when kids go beyond what we taught--helping us realize when more challenge is appropriate and for which students. Knowing what our kids can do on their own and recognizing where the edge of their learning is should guide our instructional decision-making. If we never have a chance to observe kids working independently, that becomes much more difficult.

• Teachers need an opportunity to work with small groups while the other kids are purposefully engaged. I saved this for last on purpose. Most teachers mention it first, and it is important; however, giving teachers time to call groups shouldn't be the most important reason for doing centers. The most important reasons need to be centered firmly on student learning--what the kids are getting out of it. And this one is too, if you think about it a little more. Kids need a chance to receive differentiated small group instruction from the teacher. There. That's what this bullet is really about--the kids. And since kids need this instruction and teachers need to give it, there has to be a way to engaged the others in purposeful, meaningful work that will help them grow as learners.