Whistleblowers and Winterwonderlands

As I listen to the Polar Express train blow past my backyard, I can't help think that we Americans love a good story.   The Polar Express is growing into one of those timeless tales about which this younger generation will reminisce.   Why else would a family of five pay  $100.00 to ride a train in their PJ's  with make-believe elves, just to wave to Santa?  It's not for the toys--its' for the memory. 


So it should be with our schools.  I hope that this generation will hold fast to a few memories of good teachers.  Or, will they just say, "Oh she was so great...she prepared me for the test...it was so painful."  I would call that the polar express.  Freeze the brain and hurry the pain.


The Common Core (CC) has stated in their anchor standards that they want to see teachers cover less and dig deeper.  We call that-- uncover and discover.  In the library world, we are loving the CC focus on rich text.  This is a librarians wonderland.  We are totally able to provide these texts that teachers need to dig up to enrich their classroom pedagogy. 


I have previously posted a guide to Lexiles and the CC, but this embedding of rich text is taking the recipe and enjoying the content.   As you find great articles of rich text, correctly Lexiled for use in the classroom, please take a moment to consider how research and Inquiry Based Learning can be a companion activity to reading a document.  For students to just "read" a document, there is no application or transfer of ownership and relevancy.   When you ask the students to "do something" with the content of a rich text document, then you have the formula for student-centered learning activities.  Here's the recipe:

• Find a wonderful reading article in a database. 
• Check the Lexile via a database notation or on Lexile.com (Lexile Analyzer)
• Identify core content, rich words that enhance the reading experience
• Brainstorm an Inquiry based question to foster research and additional digging.
• Create a lesson plan(s) which will encourage the asking of questions, digging for info, synthesizing of facts--> knowledge, and the creation or formation of new knowledge. 

This week, the middle school librarian at Hudson Falls shared that she and a history teacher did this with their students.  The article which was read was a piece on the Salem Witch Trials.  After reading, examining, discussion and debate, the class was asked,"Where else in history, or today, have there been witch trials?"  


A wonderful inquiry project ensued with collaborative working models examining historical events such s the Holocaust, "mean girls,"  Sri Lanka witch hunts,  the Trail of Tears and more.  This was a wonderful way of examining whether "history repeats itself."  This could go on and dig deeper.  The class could hold trials for the events.  They could discuss the Bill of Rights and why these things shouldn't occur in America.  They could embrace mathematical learning objectives and create graphs and infographics.   The possibilities are endless. 


So,  use your databases, your creative brain, your marketing skills, and create wonderful, correctly-lexiled rich text lessons aligned with the vision of the Common Core.  That would melt away the disbelief and warm the CC creator's hearts.   Let those students express themselves and share their knowledge.  Give them something to get excited about--rather than prep for the test. 

Helen Keller's letter to Alexander Graham Bell
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/P?magbell:25:./temp/~ammem_bFU0::

This primary source letter from the AmericanMemory.gov collection, is a letter sent to Mr. Bell.   In the research endeavor that follows this letter, students discover and uncover secrets critical to the invention of the telephone (such as Mr. Bell was married to a deaf person and his mother was deaf.  It was in his research to assist deafness that he invented the phone). The inquiry question could follow... How does promise come from adversity?   Now, that's an educational wonderland.

Common Core Puzzle Pieces

We are looking forward to our jam-packed full PD on Wednesday:

Come with Content, Leave with a Lesson Plan ! 

This session will focus on bringing the Common Core alignment details together.  
We are hoping the one hundred attendees will feel they have successfully packaged their content for rigor, relevance, and student engagement.    

After spending a great deal of time creating the template for planning, I thought I'd share this. Why reinvent the wheel?  This template was designed with the principles of UBD in mind, and will make sense to those who are well acquainted with Backwards design.   In addition, you will see our local inquiry model embedded. 

Contact your local librarian for additional information on PD the School Library System will be offering, and/or to find out what great resources are available for you. 
(This material/document is copyrighted, please request permission to post, distribute, etc.)
  

The Common Core Tsunami is About to Arrive

6 Fundamental Shifts for ELA in the Common CoreThe Common Core tsunami has arrived --just as Irene leaves us!  Next week, schools in the NE will open and the paradigm shift has begun.  Over the next few days, I will spotlight a few of the instructional focus fields that our area librarians and educators will need to be apprised of.  Some are great, and some will likely be met with resistance.  Hey, we didn't make the rules so don't shoot the messenger!  If librarians disseminate this news, you are  likely to be the town crier taking a midnight ride in a sea of darkness, but you'll also be a valuable resource.   Remember, Paul Revere was not shot.


Section 4 - David Coleman - 6 Paradigm shifts....
1 -Literacy begins in the earliest grades, but needs more non-fiction focus (currently is 80% literature)
2 - Literacy is a K-12 Road (not just elementary)
3 - Text Complexity matters
4 - Text-Dependent Questions (Questions that require students to pay attention to the text itself).
5 - The ability to write an argument based on evidence and complex information
6 -  Focus on Vocabulary

David Coleman claims that ..."we have evidence that in kindergarten through 5th grade kids read informational text 7% of the time."    Thus the new focus on complex text and searching for captivating articles that suck the reader in and make them want to know more.   Now, we as librarians know how to find those and could likely become the teachers' new best friend.    Take a look at EBSCO  Searchasaurus and see how easy it is to find a correctly Lexiled article for classroom use!

"... the general knowledge that you [students and teachers] develop in those [early]years plays a crucial predictive role in not only your performance in those other disciplines...."   Thus the focus back to building common knowledge.  Common Knowledge can't be built in the first two years of high school.  Elementary grades have to return to activities such as current events and non-fiction content.   Listen to an additional quote from David Coleman's presentation to the NYS Education Department:  "the elementary school’s a magnificent place for students to learn about the world through reading. Whoever thought otherwise? So the core standards for the first time demand that 50% of the text students encounter in kindergarten through 5th grade is informational text, meaning primarily text about science and history, text about the arts, the text through which students learn about the world. That is a major shift and if you think about what’s happening in this country unintentionally literature and stories dominated the elementary curriculum. And then we expanded the literacy block. So we made the literacy block 80% of the time. Guess what that meant? We destroyed history and science in the elementary school."  Once again, librarians can come to the rescue!   This is our moment... sound the bell, bring the books, show them how to find Lexiled non-fiction articles.  Yippee - bring 'em on baby. 

Read more from David Coleman's transcripts at the NYSED website:
http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/docs/bringingthecommoncoretolife/part4transcript.pdf 

Educational Makeover Contest - bring us your "packets"!

Bloom, Socrates, Gardner, Vygotsky , Hunter &  = Danielson APPR
As I sat in an APPR seminar today, I couldn't help but observe that some of the basic precepts, or learning platforms of the past, are being resurrected as mandates. Blooms taxonomy wasn't mentioned once, yet teaching methods which foster the same objectives were cited, modeled, and encouraged.  Blooms has been re-packaged in the Common Core.  The difference?  The CCSS are content, but the appendix, accompanying documents, and paradigm shifts cited all foster the top tier synthesis that Bloom's held up in its' pinnacle point. 

With the parameters of RTTT to include teacher observation (APPR) come an onslaught of training for administrators on the Danielson model of teacher evaluation.  Most are familiar with the Four Domains of Danielson: Planning And Prep; Classroom Environment; Instruction; Professional Responsibilities.  I found it interesting that a tool originally planned to foster great instruction, was not really intended to be a tool for evaluation--no less reduced to a cumulative point system in NYS.  However, the result should actually work to encourage good teachers to become great. 

Bring us your "packets"
In the evaluation rubric were performance indicators which drew from the best of yesterday's educational experts.  This is the perfect storm, synthesizing the premises of educational experts. This could very well be the change our students need to improve our current "stand and deliver" model.   Librarians have been proponents of higher level research projects for years, but have often had a hard time getting people to jump aboard the Inquiry model.  Now teachers are being told; "students should research, draw evidence from the text, draw conclusions, digest rigorous text, discuss with experts, evaluate, and present increasingly complex information, ideas, collaborate with their peers, create knowledge products that reflect deep understanding and more." (see http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-english-language-arts) This is the mode of learning in which librarians excel.  We encourage people to bring us their bogus research  "packets" so we can "repackage" them for higher level thought.   We challenge you to bring us those "worksheets"!  Give me a curriculum goal, and I can repackage it in a question that students will have to research, examine, digest, synthesize, conclude, and create to answer.   (Global footprints= Paper or plastic?  Support your decision with evidence from reliable sources, citing experts, give me data, and create an infomercial to inform the public.)

Educational Makeover?
If you are looking for great collaboration in your cybrary, or library, give the teachers a challenge:  Bring me your packet and I will redesign a common core aligned assignment that will be student-centered, have assessment imbedded, and will increase student engagement and achievement.  See how many teachers offer you a worksheet for an educational makeover.  With all the pressure of APPR and the Common Core, they might just welcome your suggestions.  Share an makeover model @ a faculty meeting so people can see the possibilities!  
Find inquiry lesson links at this site, if you don't know where to begin: http://www.wswheboces.org/SSS.cfm?subpage=419

Engage NY - Don't Be an Educational Ostrich

NYS Education Department has launched a teacher's resource center that is a must-see.   engageny.org  is intended to help teachers in all disciplines meet the requirements of the Common Core Learning Standards.  There are wonderful links that actually spell out the instructional paradigm shifts, provide curriculum exemplars, links to videos for understanding and more.  Please take the time to wander through this virtual self-help site.   
One example of a resource to wrap your head around is the explanation of the Instructional Shifts of the Common Core.   This PDFprovides an overview of the rigor that has been embedded into the standards and changes expected.   To ignore the CCSS focus on change, is to be an educational ostrich. 
The language keeps returning to showing evidence, embedding complex text, and making students accountable for their claims.   Here are two examples from page 4 of the Instructional Shifts:

• Students have rich and rigorous conversations which are dependent on a common text. Teachers insist that classroom experiences stay deeply connected to the text on the page and that students develop habits for making evidentiary arguments both in conversation, as well as in writing to assess comprehension of a text.
• Writing needs to emphasize use of evidence to inform or make an argument rather than the personal narrative and other forms of decontextualized prompts. While the narrative still has an important role, students develop skills through written arguments that respond to the ideas, events, facts, and arguments presented in the texts they read.

If you are worried about what the APPR will look like, check out these new guidelines.   Pictured below are two slides from the evaluation timeline.   This concurs with the advice we have given to start your archive of teaching effectiveness from day one this year.   Start building your instructional  portfolio and try to embed assessment for learning along the way.  Innovative assessment--not tests, per say;  Performance based assessment that is tracked;  EQ's that reflect student learning;   Be aware of what is required.  

 

Review more of these slides 



Common Core Standards and Curriculum Mapping

If you are finding yourself caught in a state (RTTT) migrating to Common Core(CC) Learning Standards, take heart.  The mission of the library, information literacy, inquiry-based learning, and authentic learning is rising to the top! Throughout the CC standards, there is inquiry language, 21st Century Learning models, and the need to produce students who can think, create, and solve problems.  Therefore, learning will return to meaning-focus, rather than rote focus.   Here is one action plan a librarian can take: 

• Print out the CC standards.  This is long, so you may want to merely print the grade levels you work with.
• Highlight what you are currently doing. 
• Make a list of what you need to tweak. 
• Itemize what is totally missing and which teachers you may have to collaborate with.  Take a moment to share your observations with those teachers.  Use your 21st Century Vocabulary such as: authentic learning, technology knowledge products, information infusing for data collection and analysis, synthesis of information, etc. 
• Hold a lunch-time digestion session in your library to point out how you can help teachers create units which will meet the CC objectives.   
• Start now -- the states awarded RTTT monies need to be ready to operate/teach in a different paradigm by July 1st.   
• Click here for a link to the Common Core Standards

     This Cornell University Prof not only needs PD for instructional delivery, but also needs therapy for his anger management.  
     There is a higher education survey administered all over called the National Survey for Student Engagement (NSSE).  Higher Education institutions across the country administer this to collect feedback on the efficacy of instruction.  The organization also provides advice on pedagogy for the 21st Century learner.    If their students are not satisfied, they vote with their feet.  To combat student dissatisfaction and instructional decay, this survey keeps higher ed focused on student success. 
     Public schools don't have the same student attrition problem--yet.  By and large taxpayers send their kids to public schools hoping the instruction is good.  Little do parents know that the instruction is often lacking also.  Teachers are merely content conveyor belts creating budding bureaucrats who know how to complete papers. 
     Common Core standards will help focus instruction for authentic learning.  The School Library Systems in NY are ready to lend PD to districts on "How to Repackage Content for alignment with the Common Core Standards."   Throughout the CC document, the premise is on:*  Fostering authentic learning
*  Not focusing on the facts or content, but focusing on meaning and knowledge products.
*  What do you want the student to be able to do with the curriculum content? (Not just repeat)
*  21st Century, globally flat, collaborative world ... collaborative classroom. 

Does this professor below reflect your instructional style?

Cornell Professor Freaks Out Over Yawn - watch more funny videos