Working Like a First Grader

You know what is amazing about teaching first grade? What makes it all worthwhile - the untied shoes, the sneezing in your face, the constantly repeating of directions ...

It's the way that they hang on to your every word and internalize it like you've just laid upon them one of life's truth. It's this very narrow window of time where the children are just aware enough to start listening to what you're saying but not too cool to blow you off. It's the pocket (sports analogy there, you're welcome!) in terms of influence and part of why we love teaching first grade so much.

WE HAVE THE POWER!!!

We try to capitalize on this all we can and one way is with our "Working Like a First Grader" expectations. We make this chart together of all the ways that first graders work, building it up to be a huge deal and they eat it up! Here's our chart if anyone wants to get in on our influencing racket ... we mean our meaningful teaching strategy:

First grade is a big deal, friends - work it!

From the limb,

Lessons from the Limb #11 - It's a New School Year ... Time to Synchronize

Hello! We hope everyone is having a great school year so far. We just started school this week - which is super weird because we're in California NOT on the East Coast, but we're on a crazy schedule with construction that has been happening in our district. Anyway, happy first week of school to us and however many weeks to you.

If you can even believe it, this is our fourth year teaching collaboratively! We can hardly believe it ourselves!! Over the past three years of teaching together we've become more and more in sync in so many ways. There are innumerable things that just flow for us now as we've found common agreements and ways to make our program work.

We've also learned, though, that it's important not to take for granted that just because we've become more and more aligned, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're always on the same page. We also have learned how important it is to carve out some time to reflect and to refine our practice so that each year, while it might not herald ground breaking programmatic shifts, continues to improve upon what we've been doing. One way that we accomplish this is by getting together for a few hours in the summer and just going over our plans for the school year. This includes talking through all of our instructional programs, our organizational systems, and our new ideas that we want to implement for the upcoming year. We wanted to share with you the notes that we made from our summer meeting. While the content itself is probably a little bit cryptic in some parts and a lot bit specific to us personally, we hope it gives you an idea of the way that we talk through and improve upon what we're doing.

View the entire document here

So the FLY AWAY here is this: no matter how long you've been teaching together, it's always worth it to take some time to synchronize, particularly at the beginning of the year. Take some time to reflect on the last year - What worked great and what bugged you? What new things would you like to add? What can you let go of? What can you streamline? What are your hopes for the upcoming year? What are your concerns? Every relationship needs little tune-ups and a collaborative teaching partnership is no different so channel your inner synchronized swimmer and sync up!

From the limb,

A Tip from Us to You - Shoes It Wisely (Hee hee)

Ok, let's get real here ... what's the number one skill that a first grade teacher needs to have? If you teach in lower elementary this is a no-brainer - you need to be a world-class shoelace tier. In fact, we should probably start being a little more hard hitting in our teacher interviews. "Oh, you have a masters in education. That's nice but can you tie teeny tiny shoes all day every day? Can you undo partially tied double-knot shoelaces with the utmost patience and care? Yes? You're in!"

One day while visiting the LAND OF BRILLIANT IDEAS AND LOST HOURS (aka Pinterest), KH was collecting ideas about exercising instead of just getting off her rump and actually exercising when she came across a post about a way to double-knot shoes that is as easy as 1-2-3 to undo. This elicited a quick double-take THEN an excited, "Say what?" THEN a rapid lemme try this out for myself. And, guess what??? It works and it's brilliant. So from us to you, here's how to tie double-knot laces that are easy to undo.

Gratefully borrowed from this website: http://www.organizinghomelife.com/archives/4123

Go forth and tie, our dear teaching friends. May your fingers be ever nimble and sure, and your students' shoes securely tied.

From the limb,

It Was a Crate Idea!

Are we the only people who get inspiration from weird, random places? That's the funny thing about inspiration, we suppose ... you never know when it's going to hit you. Well ... we recently got some inspiration from a weird source: freezer meals. Do you know about freezer meals? Some amazing people make enough meals for one month and then they freeze them. Talk about organized!!! See ...

The philosophy behind freezer meals or make-ahead meals is that it's more time efficient to do things once even if it's a lot of things at once. For example, if you're chopping vegetables for dinner, you might as well go ahead and chop vegetables for all your dinners that week. Big effort BUT saving time by doing the repetitive activity only once. You see? Let us tell you how this inspired us.

We have a weird cycle when it comes to preparing for the week. We are pretty much have everything prepared for the week in our core instructional areas by Monday morning, give or take a few things. That's good, right? Things prepared for the week, plenty of time to get started on the next week. WRONG! Somehow every week our time gets eeked away and we end up like this on Friday afternoon:

It's not a good look! It leaves us stressed and frazzled through a final early morning push on Monday and then - phew - we're ready for the week. We have repeated this lovely cycle week in and week out so far this year - hating it but not knowing how to change it. Enter our freezer meal inspired idea. We give you ...

OUR CRATE!!!

We pride ourselves in our differentiated reading program and we strive to provide our students with targeted instruction to meet their specific reading needs during our Reader's Workshop block. One component of our program is our phonics strategy groups. We run our phonics groups in six week cycles and the children move flexibly in and out of the groups based on their needs and their growth. For the phonics cycle we're in currently, we have four different strategy groups running, each with their own 6 weeks worth of lesson plans. B.C. (before crate) we were pulling each lesson and all of its supporting materials every week and putting it into our lesson plan totes.

It was the same thing again and again ... a lot of work every week to pull and prep, pull and prep. Then the crate was born:

The crate holds all of the instructional material for all 6 weeks for each phonics group. Each phonics group has a different color hanging folder to differentiate it from the other groups. Each hanging folder is labeled by week and all of the instructional materials for the week are dumped into the folder.

There are also a few hanging folders with support materials, such as our Dictation sheets and Draw and Label sheets that we use weekly. Finally, each phonics group has a checklist (we LOVE checklists) so that we can keep track of our prepping and reference what hasn't been completed yet.

You can download this document here.

KM worked on the crate all week, which seems like a lot of time, but then it was ALL prepped ... for SIX WEEKS ... ALL prepped ... can we get an "oh yeah!" Now she just pulls everything out of our lesson plan totes and dumps it back into the "Week X" folder it came from, and then puts all of the materials for the next week in the totes. SO ... MUCH ... EASIER ... and less stressful. KM is now officially more obsessed with the crate than our pencil sharpener.

One thing that we've learned about teaching 40 plus kids and striving to provide them with the most differentiated, targeted instruction that we possibly can, is that we have to stay organized. It's the only thing that keeps our train on it's tracks and keeps us sane. It's always a huge victory when we think of something that will help make our jobs go just a little smoother. So we're passing this along to you to see if you think it's a "crate" idea, too.

From the limb,

How To: Make a Video Newsletter

Soooooo remember that post a little while back where we said that we tried something new and the verdict was still out? Well, guess what?!? Our newsletters are a huge hit!!!

The parents have been loving them, the kids have been loving them, and we have been loving not writing the newsletter tomes that we ended up with last year (Lawd, could we write a loooooooong newsletter!). We've had some unintended bonuses as well, like parents sharing the videos with grandparents. Cool, right?!? And the best part is that we can provide a little window into the classroom so parents can get a feel for what every day classroom life is like ... the good, the bad, and the ugly :) (We say the ugly because we do not censor our videos ... A kid is crying in the background - oh well! Someone is staring off into space instead of participating - whatcha gonna do! We include whatever we catch on film. And now you're probably thinking ... those are two bad booty chicks ... and you'd be right :)

You can read all about us being bad booty chicks here: Special Columbia Edition of How To: The First Rule of Chart Club Is ...

While we are by no means experts in making videos, we'd like to share with you our process for churning out a video newsletter every other week so you can see how we make ours with minimum muss and fuss because really we ain't got time for that! KH loves her some checklists so we're going to share our checklist for creating a video newsletter, our storyboard (oh yeah, get ready, this post is just going to be sprinkled with terms from the industry - the movie industry - cuz we're in the know like that), and some tips we've gathered along the way.

We apologize that we cannot show you any more of our videos to help convince you to take the plunge, but alas they now star our students and we do not want to post pictures of our students on our blog. You're just going to have to take our word on how awesome they are and see where our knowledge + your creativity can take you.

Our Process

Download here

Our Storyboard

Download here

Here is an example of our storyboard from our last newsletter:

Math Workshop Video Newsletter Storyboard page 1

Math Workshop Video Newsletter Storyboard page 2

And since we're Share-y McShare-ysons, we'd like to share with you some tips we have for making video newsletters.

Tips
1. Make a plan first

     Know exactly what you want to include and be sure to capture that. You may get other footage by happenstance, but the last thing you want is to try to cobble together a coherent video from a bunch of random footage. It'll make your job much harder and more time consuming and frustrating and ... you get the point.

2. Focus on the curriculum and the learning

     We use our video newsletters to highlight what we're learning and what our life in the classroom looks like. We do not use our video newsletters for quick reminders of things like field trips or homework. We include bulleted reminders on the email when we send out the link to our video newsletter.

3. Tell a story

     Think about your video as a story - the story of the learning or the story of the content in the classroom. Let your video walk people through your topic in a way that's organized and coherent, in a way that builds upon the previous section, as if you are giving someone a tour. For example, in our most recent video about Math Workshop, we used choronlogy to tell our story. We walked the parents through each element of Math Workshop in the order that the children experience them. We told the story of Math Workshop.

4. Use the kids

     Our first video starred us - BORING! - but we didn't want to continue that way for many reasons, vanity being one :) Now the kids make up 98% of the video and they LOVE being part of the video and sharing about the classroom.

5. Have someone else shoot your footage
     For example, our last video newsletter was focused on sharing our Math Workshop. We have a different parent volunteer that floats every day during Math Workshop so we can focus on teaching. Each day we just gave the parent volunteer our camera and a post-it with some things we wanted to include in our video. By the end of the week, we had most of the footage we needed for our video and it didn't take any of our instructional time.

Post-it given to parent of footage to shoot

6. Find a predictable format and stick to it
     We have made a format for our videos and that helps us when we make our plan and when we go to put it all together. This is our format:

Title Slide - It always says "Our Class News" and the date
Introduction - We always introduce the video together and we always say: "This is our class news for ... (date)." Then we preface with the focus of the video.
1-2 Topics - We always choose 1-2 topics to focus our newsletter on.
Topic Slides - We use topic slides to separate the topics.
Closure - We always end with the credits

     We always use the same fonts, the same title and topic slides, the same formats to layer text over video, the same transitions, etc. This may seem boring but it makes for so many fewer decisions when it comes time to put the video together and it lends a continunity that makes the videos seem like part of a series instead of stand alone pieces.

7. Layer video, text, and audio

     You can deliver a lot of information in a short amount of time by layering. We often layer text on top of our video footage to give more information about what is being shown. We also use audio clips over photos or video we've muted in order to explain what's going on. Finally, when we have students introduce parts of our video, we will write their lines on whiteboards so that the viewer can hear them and also read what they are saying in case the audio does not come through as loudly as desired.

8. Get yo' self some B-roll

     That's right. We KH knows video terms. Tape some stock footage of your students during different parts of the day. It can serve as a resource to pull from when you're putting together your videos. A parent volunteer is a great person to get some B-roll footage for you.

9. Keep it short and sweet

     Try to capture as much as possible in as little time as possible. Use a critical editing eye when reviewing your video. Does it drag anywhere? Is anything redundant? Do you get the idea of something without needing all of the footage? For example, we often use footage of our students singing, but sometimes the whole song can feel long so we'll cut it down to just 1 verse and the chorus. Be a critical editor; you don't have to use everything you shot.

10. Don't spend too much time on it
     Don't obsess about it being perfect; you'll make yourself crazy. Just get the footage you need and move on. Surprisingly, some of the best feedback we've received is how much the parents enjoy that we leave in the mistakes. We're being authentic about what really happens in our classroom and that resonates with them. So take it from two perfectionists - don't try to make it perfect.

11. So there isn't actually an 11th tip. We just didn't want to have an odd number of tips .... so ... yeah ... we're weird ... anyway ...

12. Celebrate yourself and your class

     You're awesome and the work you do everyday is amazing. Brag about it! 

Finally, a technical note: We use a flip camera mostly to get our footage. We also use stills from a digital camera and sometimes film directly on our MacBook Pro. We upload all of our footage into iMovie and use it to make our videos. We export them direclty from iMovie into Quick Time. We found after trying to share our first video newsletter that the files were too large to email out to parents so we upload them using Google Docs and then change the share settings so anyone with a link can view the document even if they do not have their own Google account. Then we email out the link to all of our parents.

We hope this was helpful and maybe even a little inspiring. We would be happy to do a more technical blog about how we use iMovie to make the movie if there's interest. If anyone tries a video newsletter themselves, we'd love to see it or hear how it went!

From the limb,

Special Columbia Edition of How To: The First Rule of Chart Club Is ...

When we first started teaching, if you were to happen upon our classrooms at the beginning of the year, you would have seen beautiful, perfect teaching walls filled with colorful and informative teaching posters. They would have looked a lot like this:

Look at all of those beautiful posters!!!

We filled our walls with everything we knew our students would need to reference throughout the school year. And when parents walked in, they would think, "This is a prepared classroom. My kiddos will do well here." But, guess what? All those beautiful charts adorning our walls, a virtual cornucopia of reference material, and what would happen ...

 Child (oh so innocently): Ms. H, what's the name of this shape?

Ms. H (with infinite patience and nurturing care): Dear child, let me point you towards our chart on shapes and their defining attributes.

Different child, two minutes later: Ms. H, which one of these is a triangle, again?

Ms. H (losing just a bit of her cool): The chart. Check the shape chart. On the wall. The math reference wall.

Yet another innocent darling, just one minute later: Ms. H, is this a circle?

Ms. H (cool is completely gone, voice is at a level of shrill that only dogs can hear): WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME? CHECK THE CHART!!! ... I need to sit down.

While this is obviously an exaggeration, we're sure every teacher has experienced a similiar moment of frustration at some point in their teaching careers. But we learned and we grew as educators, and this is what our classroom looks like at the start of the year now.

Our reading/writing instructional wall as it stands right now ... and as it will look on Day 1.

No, your eyes are not failing you. Those are, in fact, blank walls you're seeing. And yes, they are completely blank when the parents walk in on the first day. And, guess what? They're usually pretty blank during Back to School night as well. Ok, we know what you're thinking:

Those are 2 bad-booty chicks!

That's right - we are rebels, baby!

And while we are pretty bad-booty (though probably all potential street cred that we had just evaporated when we used the word bad-booty), we do it because we know the secrets of Chart Club. We learned them from Teacher Camp at Columbia (here's an entry about us going on our Pilgrimmage to Columbia's Teacher College for your reading pleasure). And we're going to let you in on them too.

The Rules of Chart Club

1. The first rule of Chart Club is you don't talk about Chart Club. If they don't create it, they won't connect it.

The reason that the children were not using our charts in our previous years of teaching is that they held no personal relevance or connection for them. They came into the classroom with the charts already hung up, which relegated them to the status of brightly colored wallpaper in the eyes of most of the children. They are completely baffled by the response of "Check the chart!". What chart? All I see is your fancy teacher decorations.

Dang it!

So how to overcome that response? Well, like this:

Create your charts together.

Now, we know we're supposed to create our charts together, BUT ... We want the chart to look perfect. We already know what we want the chart to say. We want the chart to look perfect ... did we say that already?

Sooooooo ... we would plan our charts out beforehand and even pencil in what we were going to write so we could make a perfect chart right in front of our students' eyes. That's okay, right? Because they're watching it be created, right? RIGHT?

Well, erm ... no. As we learned in Columbia, co-creating a chart means allowing student input and then actually placing it on the chart, even if it was not part of the original plan. 

At this point, you may be feeling a little short of breath. Queasy even. We feel you; we really do. But the students have to feel a part of creating the chart in order to connect to it. And if they don't connect to it, then really, what's the point?

So how can you accomplish this without losing your OCD beautifully organized and perfectionist mind? Well, you can still make a plan for your chart ahead of time. Just be sure to leave room for student input. At Columbia, they showed us a bunch of charts using post-its to add student ideas.

From chartchums.wordpress.com

You can also add student examples to your chart.

From chartchums.wordpress.com

Or you can use a piece of student work as an exemplar and label it together as a class.

From chartchums.wordpress.com

2. Strive for a billboard

Now whaddya mean by that, you might be thinking. Well, this is the part where you have to channel your inner marketing major. You need to think about your charts as highway billboards. They should be advertisements of your teaching. They should catch the eye. Imagine your students zooming by at 60 miles per hour; what would they be able to get from your chart? Your charts should be designed to give information efficiently and effectively. So, what does this boil down to?

• Catchy headings (think about what would catch your students' eyes as they are zooming around your classroom)
• Clear headings - It could be a big idea, a question, a reminder ... something to quickly tell your students what the chart is about and how it can help them.
• Teaching points - Include the language of your teaching BUT just the gist of it. Brevity is key.
• Always consider the reading level and vocabulary of your students to make the chart accessible. It's not a resource if they can't read it, y'all!

3. A picture is worth a 1000 words

Visuals are where it's at, baby! Visuals are the key to an effective chart. Why, you ask? Well, let us tell you. First, visuals are essential for memory recall. The visual provides a hook for information retrieval within the brain. Second, children develop a strong visual literacy before even attending school. It's our job to capitalize on that. Third, reading levels vary greatly among classmates, but everyone can access a picture. You gotta work with what you got.

So where can you get these oh so essential visuals? You can use photographs, clipart, student work, google images ... you can also draw images. Be sure when you are drawing, though, that you draw in a way that the students can emulate. For example, children draw using shapes so use simple shapes as the basis for your drawings as well.

Example of drawing people that children can draw from chartchums.wordpress.com

You can also develop icons that you use again and again. For example, an ear might become an icon for listening. Your students will recognize and associate a consistent meaning with the icon. 

From chartchums.wordpress.com

4. Get obsessed

If you want your students to use your charts, you have to use them all the time ... we mean, like, ALL THE TIME!!! Touch them often. Refer to them. Have your students touch them while you are referring to them. Think to yourself while you are lesson planning: "How can I use my charts more? What can I reference on my chart for this lesson?" Have your students use the charts for goal setting. Have them write their names on sticky notes and then stick them on the part of the chart that they are planning to work on that week. Move the chart around and make a big fuss about it when you do. Revise the chart. Add new learning. Get creative ... do what you have to do in order to ...

Use that chart!

5. Less is more

While this is true for the quantity of text on your chart, this rule has a broader meaning. It's a reminder that instead of making a new chart for everything that you're teaching, try to make charts that can be added upon or that can span over many topics. Children are more likely to refer to a chart when they've spent a long time working with it. Look for a big idea or theme that weaves through your teaching points for the unit then create a chart around that idea where each lesson adds a little bit to the chart. 

Okay, check in. Real talk, how are you feeling? If you're anything like us after our week at Columbia, you were nodding your head through this entire entry - yes, yes, I agree with that, that resonates with me, I already knew that - but now you're feeling a tad bit overwhelmed about where to start and how to apply this to your own practice. Well, thank goodness we have a wonderful resource to share:

chartchums.wordpress.com

This website is a goldmine for everything you want to know about charts. The authors of this website also wrote an excellent book called Smarter Charts.

The ultimate resource for chart making

Well now you're ready to make your own charts. And remember the first rule of Teacher Club: share everything you learn with anyone who will listen!

Inspired by "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" by Beyonce

From the limb,

Special Columbia Edition of How To: Create Teaching Points

There are few things we love in life:  cupcakes, antiquing, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, and Pinterest to name a few.  But one classroom fav. is a strong teaching point.  A teaching point is a few sentences that define what we want our students to learn from any particular lesson.  While writing her teaching points, Kristin prefers to start with good readers do X, good writers do Y, or good mathematicians do Z.  After the Columbia experience, Kristie now prefers to add thinking prompts to her teaching points.  Today's how to is all about our beloved teaching points.  We will address what they are and how to create them to guide your instruction.

Ok, people, class is in session.  Welcome to Teaching Point 101.

At the foundation of all mini lessons is the mighty and powerful....TEACHING POINT.  Teaching points anchor your lessons and give them purpose.  They tell your students what they will be learning, how to apply the new learning, and why it is important that they do.  They help your instruction stay focused and explicit.  Without a crystal clear teaching point, your lesson will just unravel in the wind.

Let's talk about the anatomy of a good teaching point.  One of our small group leaders at the Teacher's College of Columbia Reading and Writing Project (TCCRWP), Alison Porcelli, broke teaching points down into three basic parts:

1. Skill - what you are teaching
2. Strategy - how they will do it
3. Value - why it is important

Here is an example of a teaching point used in one of Kristie's small group sessions with Alison. It focuses on teaching the elaboration technique of twin sentences when writing informational texts:  

Writers can write twin sentences by stating a fact and then asking themselves, "What more could I say?" and writing that down in the next sentence.  We do this so that the reader understands what we are trying to teach.  

Can you identify the three parts (skill, strategy, value) of that teaching point?  

Here is the answer key:
The skill is twin sentences.  
The strategy is stating a fact and then using self-questioning to add more information about the fact. 
The value is using this skill to elaborate in order to help the reader understand what it is you are trying to teach.  

Now that we've covered the what and why of teaching points, let's delve deeper into the how.  Wouldn't it be nice is there was a book called Teaching Points that listed every conceivable teaching point by curricular area and you could use it like a choose your own adventure guide?!?!?!  

Awww memories....

The bad news - consider your dreams dashed because one such magical tome does not exist.  The good news - you have everything you need to make your own teaching points!  Yay!  No?  Still smarting about the teaching point book bit?  Our bad....sorry about that. 

At Teacher Camp (aka TCCRWP), our camp counselors leaders shared tips for choosing teaching points.  Although their suggestions were centered around writing, the basic principles apply across curricular areas and can be used as a guide when developing your own teaching points in any subject area.  Without further ado, here are some ideas for sources you could use to create the skill aspect of your teaching point:

• Consider your target audience's zone of proximal development.  Ask yourself "What are my students using, but confusing?"
• Base it on student intention.  You might ask students what they want to do next when conferring with them.
• Consider their level of independence on a skill or strategy and use learning progressions to determine next steps.
• Examine student work for patterns.  You could look through the lens of extension or remediation. 

Now that we have reviewed possible sources for the skills aspect, we are ready to write the first part of a teaching point.  Here is the beginning portion of a teaching point that could be used in a mini lesson for beginning writers who are telling a story through pictures:

Writers can use illustrations to tell their stories by....

Next up is the strategy.  How are they going to perform the skill?  What thinking prompts could you give your students to help them use the skill independently?  Unfortunately, there aren't any short-cuts here.  This just takes some thinking on your part and use of strategies and routines from your own professional skill bank.  As we mentioned above, Kristie likes to add thinking prompts to her teaching points.  The addition of thinking prompts to a teaching point gives your students a question to ask themselves in order to remind them how to apply the skill.  A simple thinking prompt that you might use is to ask yourself what do your students need to do in order to apply the skill.  Let's go back to the example skill of conveying information through illustrations.  In order to do that, students need to read their pictures and think about what parts of the story the reader is seeing.  If that were to be added to our teaching point, we'd have:

Writers can use illustrations to tell their stories by reading their pictures, then asking themselves "What more could I add to help the reader see more of my story?" and then adding those details to their illustrations.  We do this.....

The most important part of the teaching point, the part that most often gets left out, is the why.  If we want students to apply the skills and strategies we teach, it is important to give them a reason why they should.  When thinking about the value of a particular skill you want to teach, the best way to determine the why is to ask yourself what value does this add to my students as independent readers, writers, thinkers, etc.  You could also think of it through a different perspective by asking yourself if they didn't do the particular skill in question, what would happen?  A "so what" question if you will.  If we were to consider the example skill of conveying information through illustrations, what would the value be in teaching that skill?  Why should students care about adding to their illustrations?  They might add to their illustrations to make their story clearer or to develop the characters in their story or to give more information than is conveyed by their text.  No one particular reason is more right than the other; it really just depends on the purpose of the lesson and what you are trying to get your students to do more of independently.  If we were to add the "so what" to complete our teaching point, it would read:

Writers can use illustrations to tell their stories by reading their pictures, then asking themselves "What more could I add to help the reader see more of my story?" and then adding those details to their illustrations.  We do this so that the reader can understand the whole story.  

This concludes Teaching Point 101.  The next time you sit down to plan a mini lesson or a small group lesson, think about what teaching point you will create to anchor your instruction.  

From the limb,

Special Columbia Edition of How To: Make Your Teaching Stickalicious

Have you ever taught a lesson that seems to hit the spot (it was explicit, the students were all engaged, everyone had ideas to share during pair-share)?  Then when you look at your students' work that skill or strategy is nowhere to be seen.  We often ask ourselves, what's the deal?!?  What happens in the short distance it takes them to move from the carpet to the table that prevents the teaching from sticking?  Why, with all amazing teaching, engagement, and participation, is the transference not there?

While attending the writing workshop at the Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP), we had the opportunitiy to participate in an assortment of closing workshops that delved into the logistics of teaching young writers.  One of the workshops that caught our eye was geared towards making your teaching sticky: Making Your Teaching Stick:  Methods, Engagement, and Strategies to Lift the Level of Your Workshop Teaching.  Although the session and examples were focused around writing, we think the ideas presented hold true across curricula areas and wanted to share them with you in the event you've ever questioned the stickiness of your teaching.

P.S.  These steps are based on the learning principles in Shanna Schwartz's book, A Quick Guide to Making your Teaching Stick.

P.S.S.  You're welcome for the cliffnotes of the presenter's (Jennifer DeSutter) cliff notes :)

So without further ado, here's how to make you teaching stickalicious:

Stickalicious Strategy 1:  Consider what you students are ready to learn.

This, we feel, is the most theoretical tenant of making your teaching stickalicious.  We have all heard about Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (the relationship between developmental readiness and instruction), but to super charge the stickiness, it's all about what you choose to do once you know where your students are.  Jennifer DeSutter shared different tips for identifying next steps.  The simplest tip is to look at what your students are using but confusing through observations, their work, and conversations you have with them in small group or during conferences.  Those areas show what they are already trying and areas where they are ready to receive instruction.  She also shared the strategy of considering the progression of complexity for any given skill or strategy.  When you see your student has gained proficency with a certain skill, you can add layers of complexity in baby steps.  For example, if you notice that a student is attempting to show order and transition with "and", "then", or the super combo "and then" throughout their writing to connect their ideas, the next baby step would be instruction around alternative signal words (i.e. first, after, etc.).  Not feeling confident about your grasp of learning progressions?  While you can find learning progressions for any subject online, Lucy Calkin's Writing Pathways book in her new units of study series makes this easy for writing because it has K-5 learning progressions laid out for each genre....just sayin'.

Stickalicious Strategy 2:  The power of movement on the mind.

Utlizing movement is a great way to not only make your teaching stick, but it can also be a powerful tool to help students recall instruction.  For example, you could have your students use acting as a tool for planning (What happened?  Then what happened next?) or revising (What was missing?  What part was confusing?) their ideas.  You could also use movement to approach your instruction in a different way, a way that creates a shared experience.  For example, when teaching about the elements of narrative structure, have your kids act out each element.  Both of these ideas make your teaching stick because they create an experience that serves as a hook for immediate recall you could reference to prompt your students while coaching ("Remember when we learned about a story's setting and we used out bodies to make the setting of The Three Little Pigs?  Every story has a setting.  What is the setting for this story?") or when they are trying to problem solve.

Stickalicious Strategy 3:  Make students famous.

It sounds strange, right?  But we are serious!  How many times have you found yourself on repeat (i.e. every sentence starts with a capital letter..).  But then, one day, John Boy says, "Hey, did you know that every sentence starts with a capital letter?"  You look at John Boy like YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!?!?!  But then you look out into the audience and you see a class full of minds blown.

From that moment forward everyone is capitalizing letters at the beginning of their sentences.  Kids listen to kids.  Instead of continuing to push rewind and play, change the tape.  Make a kid famous.  To make a kid famous, Jennifer DeSutter suggested telling stories that live inside your classroom.  Stories about John who tried a new strategy, or Jacob who went crazy and added speech bubbles to his pictures, or Jingleheimer Schmidt who helped a fellow student.  Get it?  John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt?!??  Excuse KM while she laughs hysterically...there may have been knee slaps involved.  KH looks on in shame, shaking her head over that nonsense.  

Anyway....anyone can be famous.  Students could be famous for showing their thinking in math, or for using science vocabulary, or telling a juicy story through pictures during writing.  It will make them crazy kinds of proud and confident AND make your point stick.  Who could you make famous in your classroom?

Stickalicious Strategy 4:  Chartopolis, much fancier than Chart City.

If you have every seen our classroom, you would quickly realize that we love charts.  It's a proverbial chartopolis.  Our charts are visual and usually color coded.  Our students learn and retain the most from out charts when we revisit them often and for different purposes.  To make charts more sticky, consider the amount of information you put on them.  Do you have charts that you literally have to sit there and reread because it's filled corner to corner with verbiage?  Be honest.....this is a judgement free zone....we have been guilty of that from time to time.  Our chart sage Jennifer DeSutter put things into perspective when she said you want your charts and tools to act as an ad for your teaching.  You want your charts aimed at your audience (you probably wouldn't have lots of words if you were making a chart for non-readers) and you want them to demonstrate the gist in a 10 second read.  Sometimes 10 seconds is all you get before they start staring off into the distance at some dust ball collecting in the corner.  Powerful charts can help you communicate you point and make it stick.

Excellent resource for making powerful charts.
They also have a website with charts that that will blow your mind.  

Simple process poster depicting the writing process.
Notice the illustrations that accompany each step?

This chart uses students work and key signage
to draw the reader's attention to particular areas of note.

Stickalicious Strategy 5: Rinse and Repeat.

This may be the easiest fix to making your teaching stick but it takes patience and persistence, little grasshoppers....Can't you imagine Mr. Miyagi saying something like that if he were training us to make our learning sticky?

Wax on, wax off ...

Ok....we can't stress the importance of repetition in making your teaching stick.  It takes somewhere between 7 to 15 or is it 1 and 100 exposures???....thanks for nothing google multiple exposures to something before you can internalize and apply the new learning.  That's not to say you have to brow beat them with the same lesson in the same way at the same time everyday.  We suggest using some fancy footwork.  Say you taught a lesson on self-questioning as a clarification strategy during Reader's Workshop (exposure 1), you might:  make a mini chart of it to use during small group (exposure 2), model it in a think aloud read aloud (exposure 3), confer with students in a small group or one - on - one (exposure 4), etc.  The possibilities are really endless, but the point is repetition is key.  Each repetition is another opportunity for your students to revisit, revise, and try.

In conclusion, the next time you question your sanity and feel your blood pressure rise when a student asks "so what's a connection?" after weeks of teaching making connections, take a step back and consider the stickiness of your teaching.  Remember Stickalicious Teaching:  identifies next (baby) steps, uses movement and powerful charts, makes students famous, and revisits concepts frequently to allow students to have the opportunity to revise and retry. Now go and get sticky with it!


From the limb,