Monday Motivator #6 2022-23

 

Responding to student behavior is one of the biggest challenges educators face today. While classroom and behavior management are critical skills for meeting student behavior needs, many teachers feel unequipped to provide meaningful behavioral interventions.

Additionally, students need meaningful behavioral interventions. As many as 1 in 5 students experience a mental health or behavioral challenge during their K-12 educational career when they would benefit from evidence-based interventions and supports.

To meet this need head-on, teachers must be equipped to respond to student behavior in meaningful ways. A key component of behavioral interventions is delivering effective, regular, and consistent positive feedback to students in the form of behavior-specific praise. But the adults in your building must feel confident in providing this type of praise.

Behavior-specific praise is a type of praise that helps students learn what positive behaviors look and feel like, and increases the likelihood students will engage in those behaviors in the future. Behavior-specific praise includes three key components:

• A description of a positive social or academic behavior 

• Specific identification of the student/group engaging in the positive behavior

• Use of an authentic, positive, and warm tone of voice

When teachers provide in-the-moment praise to students, both the student receiving the praise and their peers learn to identify positive behaviors. And when students see examples of what those behaviors look like—and receive positive reinforcement— they are much more likely to engage in those positive behaviors again. 

View the complete guide from Panorama here.

Monday Motivator #5 2022-23

 

Why Your Students Need Time To Think

by Michael Linsin

https://smartclassroommanagement.com/2020/12/05/students-need-time-to-think/

There is a strategy that elite performers use every day.

It’s something that takes just a few minutes, yet can be the difference between success and failure.

Oddly, it isn’t taught in school.

In fact, it’s never mentioned as part of any curriculum, professional development, or pedagogical training. It isn’t discussed among the educational intelligentsia.

It’s as if it doesn’t exist.

So what is it?

It’s a full-stop pause of all activity so students can think. It’s a cessation of sound and movement that enables students to plan, strategize, and visualize the tasks in front of them.

Some students do this naturally. But most, like most people, do not. Instead, they rush headlong into their work without a clue of the direction to take—let alone the steps along the way.

They’ve been conditioned, you see, to begin producing the second they’re given the go-ahead. This is a good thing when it comes to routines and procedures.

But it’s the death knell to creative work. It’s like Alex Honnold attempting El Cap without knowing the route.

Ironically, many of these same students who don’t take the time to think freeze up and take forever to get started. The others simply don’t produce quality work.

The solution to both problems is to require your students to sit and think before putting fingers to keyboard or pencil to paper.

This isn’t a new strategy.

It’s been used for millennia by everyone from Epictetus to John F. Kennedy to Fred Rogers. Patience and stillness. Deep thought and empathy. Quietude while awaiting the fog to lift.

Contemplation should be scheduled as part of every period of independent work. I recommend the following three parameters:

Sit still for five minutes.

Think through the process of your objective.

Wait for the ‘go’ signal before beginning your work.

Those five minutes—or two or three minutes depending on your grade level—will produce better insight and creativity than when students aren’t given this time.

Pausing first is also motivational because it excites students about the possibilities of their assignment. It provides confidence to achieve their vision. It helps sustain energy until completion.

Your students can sketch, chart, or diagram their thinking if they wish, but they may not actually begin the assignment until your signal.

Souls & Sages

In this day and age, deliberation is in short supply.

Students are effectively trained by their smart phones, video games, and even their teachers to react instead of respond with prudence. Thus, there is very little meditation of thought or wisdom accrual.

The remedy is to schedule a thinking break in the few minutes before allowing your students to tackle any important project or assignment.

No need to worry about time lost. As your students get used to flexing this dormant superpower, they’ll become more efficient than ever before. They’ll experience a deeper and more enjoyable state of flow.

They’ll become old souls, sages ahead of their time.

Forethought is a skill, after all. It’s a muscle you train and develop in order to perform at your best, avoid bad decisions, and succeed at the highest levels.

But it must be deliberately cultivated. It must be practiced and repeated every day and before every creative assignment.

Monday Motivator #4 2022-23

 

Monday Motivator #3 2022-23

Honoring Student Identity

Christy Rush-Levine

It is rare that I take time out from professional reading for books I don’t intend to put in the hands of my sixth graders. Most of the time, if I do read a book meant for grown-up people, it is about becoming a more effective teacher.
Recently, a friend sent me The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery, a book I wanted but would never purchase for myself. Since it was a gift, I gave myself permission to indulge. Little did I know it would illuminate the classroom more than many books written by classroom educators.
In the book, Montgomery shares the frustrations of Alexa Warburton, a pre-veterinary student studying in an octopus lab at Middlebury College in Vermont:

Try to make a maze that will show how this creature thinks. We don’t even understand them enough to test them. Maybe mazes aren’t the way to study them. Science can only say so much. I know they watched me. They followed me. But proving that intelligence is so difficult. There’s nothing as peculiar as an octopus.

My eyes widened as I read her words. I nodded in agreement, because my mind had immediately, naturally drawn a connection between the struggle to effectively assess octopuses and the challenges of authentically assessing middle school students. We don’t even understand them enough to test them, my heart cried out. There’s nothing as peculiar as a middle school student, I marveled.
I continued reading. With every new page, Montgomery had me falling more and more deeply in love with octopuses. Like middle school students, there is nothing inherently cuddly or inviting about octopuses. However, also like middle school students, their very presence in our world makes it that much more enchanting and humbling. I am thinking about how I communicate to all of my students that their very presence in my world is valued and appreciated.

Honoring Student Identity Through Classroom Management

I introduced a Google form that involved students getting parental permission. I explained that in addition to providing their guardian’s email address to confirm permission, it would save me time and confusion if students could indicate whether I would need a Spanish translator when contacting their families. 
Immediately, Braden commented, “I thought English was the national language.”
I froze. In a moment when I was making an effort to be inclusive, he had made an openly exclusive statement. I was angry. 
I also knew every student in my class would be watching, listening, and learning from my next move. What did I want to teach them?
“Braden, I am confused. Your comment makes it sound like you are saying I should demand that all people speak English, but I know that would mean my students with parents who speak another language would not have access to the same things as everyone else. So I am confused.”
“Oh,” Braden responded, “I think I confused myself, too. That is not what I meant. I don’t know why I said that.”
I took a deep breath and smiled. All traces of anger dissipated. “Wow, Braden! You just reminded me what I love about this class. You are all so brave. You are willing to take the risk of sharing your thoughts, even though we know it is rare that our first thinking is our best thinking. You are also open to new ideas and wise enough to revise your thinking when you realize something new. That is really mature.”
Another student immediately chimed in, “I am Mexican and American. My parents speak Spanish, but they understand some English.”
I answered, “I have had people apologize to me before for not speaking perfect English. I never understand that. I am so amazed at how people can hold two languages in their brains! Hablo un poquito de Español. I can understand only a small amount of Spanish. So I understand how challenging it is.” 
“I know some Polish,” another student offered, followed by, “and I can count to 10 in Japanese!”
“My parents can speak a little English and you can speak a little Spanish, so you probably don’t need a translator to talk to them,” added someone else.
Braden finished with, “I think it’s cool to speak another language.”
I thought to myself how easy it would have been to shame Braden for his initial comment. And I considered how much we all would have missed out on had I done that. I recalled something I heard educator/author Cornelius Minor say: “I am pro-kid.” My reaction to Braden came from valuing all students. Unconditionally.

Honoring Student Identity Through Academic Instruction

Next week our curriculum calls for teaching students to write a claim in response to a prompt. I want students to know their ideas matter. That means I have to be intentional about the opportunities I give them to share their thoughts. 
I looked at the prompts provided in our curriculum resources. Every question was a variation of the same sentence frame: Why does this character make this choice? 
In each case, although the question appears to be open-ended, there is definitely a single response that demonstrates the most accurate understanding of the story. If students are going to feel their voices are valued, I need to teach them that crafting claims in response to prompts is not about getting the right answer. Rather, it is about developing their thinking about a text.
So, I rewrote the prompts. I kept drafting questions until I came up with ones that met the following criteria:
Does the question have more than one answer?
Is there sufficient evidence to support each answer?

The questions I came up with based on the texts provided in our curriculum are as follows:
Who has the power in the story?
Is school hard for the protagonist?

With these prompts I am confident students will feel ownership over their responses. There is truly more than one correct answer to each question, and I appreciate the thought that goes into determining which answer to give.
Much like Sy Montgomery with the octopuses, I may never fully understand how these middle school creatures think, but the longer I study them, the more my appreciation for them grows. Honoring student identity through equitable classroom management and in academic instruction that lifts student voices brings me one step closer to proving their peculiar intelligence. 

https://choiceliteracy.com/article/honoring-student-identity/