[0:08]So we're going to let you watch this right now. We're going to give you another minute. Write down your best practices. I know. I know.
[0:29]And you don't have to write your name down, I don't know. Although it would be helpful to write your name, because if you're doing something, actually write your name. If you're doing something, then that person can go and say, "Hey, Miss, I saw that you're doing this, can I come to your room and see it?" Or Miss like, "I want to try that. Can I come to your room?" The sounds match too, so it's like much more calming sounds in these different timers. A rocket is like fireworks and things like that. So it's a really fun way to go through this. Okay, so you just want to kind of have like a best practice. You just wanted to kind of put it to the forefront of your mind while we go through these things. It's going to be very laid back. We have an hour, so really just kind of just kind of throw some things at you and then give you a chance to kind of wrap it all up and think about how you can implement some of these things in your own classrooms. Um, before we start, though, we just kind of wanted to have. I know this is, you know, something that we always do in Pds, but just just some basic norms. Be open, or be present, making sure that, you know, we're all on task. Being open to new ideas and then just being flexible. I know you guys have heard these already, so no need to go on too much. And we just thank you for your time. So, we kind of split this up. I have some teacher like a champion 2.0. I know a lot of us have read it, and I've seen it, or we've read snippets of it. Um, we have some strategies from there that I'm going to kind of go into. And then after that, Miss Cooper is I am sharing, um, I'm in I'm a Nate fellow, and I'm sharing some of the um discourse that I have been engaging in and the case studies. So I'm sharing some of the practices that I'm taking from the case studies that I've been involved in, and how I'm being intentional in the classroom. Okay. So, um, right away. So in a little while, um, I'm going to give you um a cheat sheet because there's a website called The Main Idea. And what they do is they take educational texts and books and they make this cheat sheet in terms of the main idea from every chapter and every section of the book. So this is essentially Teach Like a Champion 2.0, but just in a few short pages that kind of hit on all the strategies from the entire book. Um, so I'm going to talk about a few that I really that really resonate with me in my practice and then um show a quick clip um of a few of them in practice. And then we'll move into Miss Cooper. So I just want to go quick. So my first one is setting high expectations. Um, and this is pulled straight out of there. Um, is just in that you set these expectations and you maintain them consistently with your kids so that it just becomes a natural habit for them. Um, the no opt out is in several different places in Teach Like a Champion. Um, what really resonates with me, and I just kind of shared this in our master teacher meeting today. This is something that I'm continuously working on as a teacher and that's getting beyond that uncomfortable feeling of waiting too long. Because it's a balance that we kind of have to keep. We want to keep our pacing up and we want to get to a lot of content in a short amount of time. But then they're asking us to provide this wait time for students to not just go to the next student. You got it wrong, I'm going to go to you. You got it wrong, I'm going to go to you. I'm just going to give you the answer in some sort of way. Just providing the students a chance to process information. Um, taking this one step further, when you call on a student or if you just wait a few seconds before you call on anybody, even if you have several hands in the air just waiting to give you an answer. Those few students that don't have their hands in the air that need that extra processing time. One thing that I know I do in my practice that I'm trying to change is to not restate the expectations and the questions too many times. So providing them with some silent wait time. I realize that if I talk and I just restate the question and restate the question and I'm circulating the classroom, I'm constantly giving them the question or another strategy they need to try. They never actually had time to process or come up with whatever strategy or model best suits them. So if I just state it and leave it, let them just process it themselves and then maybe give them some strategies if I see them struggling, that's definitely something that I'm working on with my own practice. And you'll see this happened in the video, and this is a video from a couple days ago, so um something I'm actively working on. The other thing was additional questions um but not the answer. So kind of building into your lessons, some additional questions you can do. Also in there is like preparing for the errors in advance, like my students may take this route. Let me prepare a couple questions that I can kind of build them up and like bring them back around to where we're going with the objective. Um, cutting time during transitions. So this is kind of what I was talking about in terms of providing wait time, but still wanting to keep your pacing at a certain place where you're going to you're going to get to all the content that you need to. Um, that is where I noticed that I can find where I can kind of make up that time if I took a couple extra minutes that I didn't plan to for some of the questions. So that means that you are transitioning with intention, meaning you've set the seconds. You have five seconds, I want everyone to be moving here. Positive narration for students who are moving quickly and silently. I noticed that my transition time got cut and that kind of kept my lessons and within the time frame that I like. Questions?
[5:46]Okay. The next one is um stretch it. Um, stretch it is one that took a a lot of time and dedication to do within my lessons, because you realize how students, they want to get the correct answer. But then it kind of stops there. I just moved on to the next phase of my lesson. I moved on Independent Practice. All right, great. We got that. Let's move on. But giving students a window into the next level of standards, right then and there, even if some kids weren't necessarily ready for it, but you had some that were. That is means you're rewarding the students with more rigor instead of just rewarding them like, high five, everybody pat on the back. You guys got it right, and then ending it right there. That constantly keeps them challenged, and it keeps them motivated, meaning there's the next step to what I'm learning. It doesn't end at the third grade standard. You got that right. So let me give you a little hints into what the fourth grade standard would look like on this same topic, on this same objective. So rewarding them with more rigor then just you got it right. Which is something we appreciate at the next grade. Well, you will notice that the kids buy into this. And I'll if you play with them and say, "Oh, I don't know, if you guys are ready for this? You guys are okay with this? But are you ready for it?" They'll be like, "Harder, harder." Those are my kids. "Harder, harder." Like make it harder. They want that. They want that challenge. That's what's actually fun for them, but we don't really realize that all the time.
[7:10]Um, yeah. And that's it. So I said create a culture where they want to be challenged as a result of mastering standards instead of just being rewarded.
[7:19]Uh, Trisha got a lot into this time. Okay, um, format matters. I talked about this a lot um with some of you in personally. Um, how students respond verbally matters. It's directly correlated with how they feel when they sit down and they're expected to write and explain their answers. If they never got that thought process out verbally, which is easier than writing, then they are completely caught off guard when they're asked to explain their writing, even in math. So, for how when they when you call on them and how they answer, if they just say the answer is one, probing them and having them phrase their answers as a complete thought makes a world of difference. So with that, would be saying, um, the not the answer is one, but the sum of 0 + 1 is 1. And then you saying, "Why?" And then them saying, "Because I did this, and this, and this." And then that right there, when they have to write that, they already have that process. So flipping the question even in math. You know what I mean?
[8:21]It's easy. It's harder in math, cuz you just want you're you're looking for that one concrete answer, but just going around, and I'm going to show my clip is going to be from a math lesson in terms of how you can probe students and allow them to explain their thoughts. Um, it's really beneficial. So then other quick techniques, before I show um my clip, um circulating the classroom is really great. If you get stuck in this one little area or just one little roundabout that you always go, the students recognize that, and they realize that they won't be challenged because you'll never really go over there and see what they're working on. Um, so I would kind of get in the habit of just kind of constantly moving and getting your students in the habit of tracking you, no matter what, um, if you're the one speaking. And also for other students. If another student is speaking, getting in the habit of tracking, um, there's a moment in my video when they all went to look at one student, and like, I kind of cut him off a little bit because I wanted to acknowledge that I like the fact that they all were tracking that one speaker.
[9:16]And if a kid over there wasn't, he like got up and then he he engaged immediately when he wasn't necessarily there at the beginning. I know Miss Cooper does that in her classroom as well. Call and response. Um, different ways to kind of get your kids to respond in different ways. Um, I know I tell them to blow their answer in their hand if they have it, and then release it, and then they all say it together. Or put um the answer in their desk, on their hand, on the count of three, shoot them up. And so they all put the answer up on at one time. So different kind of ways to check for understanding in that way. Whiteboards, put it up, um, is the way to change up the pace and kind of keep the joy alive, which is another one. Um, we can kind of get bogged down, and that's kind of why we wanted to do this PDD. Was it it's like at that time of the year, when you've been doing these certain things all year, we kind of need some new ideas or some ways that we can kind of hype it up in our classrooms. Um, this is the time to do it. This is kind of what we've been doing. Just like, play some music, um, get the kids up, have them change seats or something. Like just kind of impede some joy back into your classroom so that the energy level can stay up. Okay. So I'm just going to show, um, a quick video. I'm going to kind of click through it a little bit so you don't have to watch the whole thing.
[10:42]Um, so you'll see um from the ones that I shared, you'll see a few of them just kind of happening. Um, so I'll play it and then we'll just talk really briefly and then Miss Cooper will move into her segment. So last week we were going into fractions a little deep. And I gave you some problems. And we worked together in this book and in the pass out.
[11:13]Another Teach Like a Champion strategy is providing students with actual steps in order to solve problems. All the time.
[12:07]This is actually showing also how they're feeding off each other's ideas and really tracking each other's thinking. So I set that up. So then what was what was that next step? What was the next step, London?
[12:30]Okay. So then that's the next step, right? So we have this number here, the whole number here, and we want to know what 1/8 of 16 is. So I agree. I need to pass out to these equal rows until I get to 16. Okay. So I already had what? Eight. Eight. So I have 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Oh, that was easy. So what do we notice about these rows and what can we say about this 1/8? What do we remember about that? Ja Um, we were circling groups. We will circle groups. What is a group in this case? A group like a column. So I want to say, so like for this instance, I could have said, "Oh, so circle groups." Right? And then just started circling the 1/8. But in this case, it was a misconception, because she said, "Oh, we're just going to circle a column." And that would be half of that group. So that was so I I could have missed that, and thought that she understood this concept. But she didn't. So if I providing that extra around. Oh, okay. So you're saying circle rows. And what are these rows? What what fraction represents each of these rows here? What fraction, Shane? 2/8. Well, if I circle two of them, it'll be 2/8, but just just one of them is what? 1/8. 1/8, right? So our question is, how much is 1/8 of 16? How much? How much is that, Valentina? Eight. Yeah, these are eighths. But I'm saying, what is 1/8? What do you notice about that? Right, exactly. There are two holes in 1/8 of 16. So you remembered this. So you remembered all of our steps, right? Yeah. Yeah. Use the denominator, because your denominator is how many groups you'll need. So we set that up using rows, and then we use the pass-out method until we got to 16. Okay. So that was um providing steps for your students all the time. It kind of diminishes the fear factor in terms of solving things like that. Like, "Oh, I've seen this. I have this. I have this." So then these are the steps that I need to take to figure this out. Um, the next thing is, I'm not going to show this exactly. The actual skill, because so that was all a review of a previous lesson. The actual skill was kind of flipping that, and sometimes providing them with the whole group, or providing them with just the fractional part, and they had to figure out what the whole is, using word problems. So, I use the same numbers but provided that in the word problem so that they actually ended up with the same model. So that was one of the questions that I use today as well. And you know that that is two gray rabbits. I want to know how many rabbits are in the whole pet store. Hm. So I want to find that out. Well, I have it. Exactly. Using the same numbers, I gave them the same word problems, but I started in a different spot. So the way they would end up with the same model, but they've done two completely different strategies and started in two different points. Okay. So, uh, I didn't realize until I watched the video, but I watched her in position. Just like, Da
[19:17]You can you see all sorts of things when you film your lessons. This is amazing. She's like, for goodness. Oh, right. Okay, let me be more explicit, cuz this is tough. This is tough to go from one fourth and just knowing what each group is to able to drop two groups. Did that for me. Oh, wow. I think it's a great example because, I know why. It's one sided. You know why. It's the one sided because she's like, just I don't know why. So she's not going for another subject because this is one sided. When they leave, this is the final final thing.
[25:43]So if you don't know who Naate stands for, it's the National Academy of Advanced Teacher Education. And so there, um, we go, depending on what cohort you are involved in, you may go twice a year, you may go three or four times a year. Um, but it's really about digging deep with um, colleagues and educators from around the country. Um, and really being involved in thought-provoking case studies. And so bringing those case studies back. Some of them are real, some of them um are fictional, and just really digging deep and bringing back those best practices and how to implement those into the classroom.
[26:43]Last year, and this year. So we started last year because I became a Naate Fellow last year. All right. So the first one was productive classroom discourse. And so this um requires that the teacher is the facilitator. And so we're talking about discourse. Yes, we want kids to agree and disagree, right? So like the basic stuff is, I agree with so and so. I would like to add on to so and so. Or I have a new idea. But I really wanted to push them, and this case was really about pushing the kids to be their facilitators on their own. So the teacher really just being the person that sits there, provides the questions that have um specific answers to them. So it's not necessarily an open-ended type of thing. Like you're looking, when you're when you're planning this type of lesson, you're actually looking for a specific answer, and you're trying to take the kids there just by facilitating and asking them the questions, and then um making sure that they're citing the evidence, right? Which is a big part of park and where in common core, where we're going towards now, being able to provide the evidence and cite the evidence in order to um justify their answers. Also, um, in terms of it being one-sided discourse, that just means that the teacher is the one that is providing all the questions. So the teacher is driving the facilitation process, and then rich in dialogue. So I'm going to show you um two clips. Okay. So let me give you um background. So these clips are from my students last year. Um, this actually took a long time to get them to this like a long. It took all year, practically. They didn't get to this level until the spring. So I didn't I had a project that I had to do, and so my goal was to actually take a small group of kids. And they're all different levels. Some some well, not necessarily. These kids are like medium-high kids. Um, and so I took this group, and I worked with them all year on building and deepening their dialogue within the classroom. And so this clip is going to show you, I'm in the room, and I'm facilitating the discussion. So you'll hear my questions. I have them planned out. They had already read the text prior to um coming into this discussion. Um, it was Dear Mr. Winston, which is one of my favorite stories. I think you guys have that in third grade, too, right? Or maybe I yeah, I think you're getting in trouble.
[29:05]Okay. So last week we discussed we started reading Dear Mr. Winston from when I went to the library. Can anyone give me any information about what's going on in the text?
[31:31]Trey, what's going on? What's going on in the story? Trey.
[33:32]What do you think about what Kamaria just said?
[36:13]I was actually also modeling. So I'm actually modeling. So the question that I posed to him today was what conclusions can you draw about the letter writer's attitude from her suggestions to Mr. Winston? So what conclusions can you draw about the letter writer's attitude from her suggestions to Mr. Winston?
[36:34]And when I say the letter writers, who am I talking about? Karen. I'm talking about Karen. Okay, go ahead. Anyone can start.
[36:47]And she she's not sure if the snake is poisoned. She takes the snake into the library, and Mr. Winston says something to her. He ends up somehow touching the snake, and her parents end up making her write a letter because in some way Mr. Winston ends up getting harmed, right? And then Kemark stated that when she had to write that letter, that she actually didn't seem sorry
[40:57]Okay. So, um, so I know you guys kind of get the gist of that, but this took a lot of work. Like this, we did this until the spring. And we started in November, and this happened in like April. So this is something that is not going to happen Monday, right? It's not going to happen in February. So just get that out your mind. So even even your kids that are that are there, they still need the work and the practice. So this is something that I would encourage you to do, and if you need like more guidance around like how to frame questions, I'm definitely available to help. So the next um uh case study that really resonated with me was the power of feedback. Um, and these were three things that um I really took away from that session was being intentional. And that goes for reading and math. So being intentional, the questioning, meaning like what questions am I using behind for them to answer or to reflect, or think about? And then examplars. And that was something that I never did was I never provided, especially in um math, I never provided them with an examplar of what I actually I wanted to see, right? It was just like, "Oh, here's your exit ticket. You got a plus four." Bye. Just go. And we might have revisited like the next day, but not an examplar as the this is what I actually wanted to see. Um, so like how I I had the same issue, so like if you see like my uh board work, I have my example in the corner. Just getting in the habit of them instead of making an answer key and like grading on an answer key, to actually write out mine is in pink. to actually write out how I would want to see it, and then that way they can they can even if they weren't up there on that board, they can see what they were missing and that's the example right there. And that's like straight from their benchmark, like, this is what we need to do. And I try to include a different a couple different ways they could have solved it in case they didn't do it that way. But that's just one way in math to just kind of put that up there and like work out a problem so they can see it. Um, so what um I have on your desk and what you'll see up here is I have some journals from this year's kids, and those are math journals. And if you want to flip them over, this is very time consuming. I mean, Miss Wright, Miss Hanse and I, um, Aaron and Brandy, we stated, and we literally go through all of these journals. We print out the exit the examplars, we write them in or we type them up. We respond to the kids, um, and then we write we write to them. And what we always encourage them to do is we encourage them to that math experience. So it's not just about answering the question and showing your work. But more so about, "Okay, well, what did you learn?" And, "Are you still having any questions?" "Do you um, you know, still have any thoughts? Did you think the lesson went great?" And so they're becoming really comfortable with sharing those thoughts. We try to get them away from, "Oh, I went to centers today, and I did math with learning, and I don't know what I'm learning." That's not what the journal is for. I want you to talk about exactly the learning experience, based on the lesson and the skill that was taught. So they're getting out of the habit of um, just kind of writing whatever. Like, "Oh, I went to the mall this weekend." That's not what this journal is about. So this is, are there are examples of the examplars, and then there are some questions based on their written responses. There's some questions in there that um we write at the bottom. And sometimes the kids respond to us in their next journal. So the maybe the next day, they may respond to us in the next journal, or written by. Or sometimes they come up to us verbally and just say, "Hey, like, I got your question." Or, "Can I talk to you about the question?" Or they'll just informally like um, so yesterday, when you're in my journal, I did, I know. Just tell us right then and there. And that's cool, too. And then they become more um, open, and invested because they know that they're actually writing to them. And you're writing back. It's almost like a diary, right? For the kids, an educational diary. Um, without just putting like a plus sign.
