March Madness: Thanks, Warren!

From Warren Bennis, an encouraging quotation:

"One of the marvelous things about life is that any gaps in your education can be filled, whatever your age or situation, by reading and thinking about what you read."

This is good news. I didn't pay much attention in Problems of Democracy in 11th grade.

Tanny

Tween Tribune

Guest post: Tina Wolfer Grade 8

I introduced Tween Tribune to my class last week and was blown away by how engaged they were.

TweenTribune offers teachers and students an opportunity to read high interest news stories about everyday people from around the world.  Introduced in such an appealing way, Tribune stories are interesting to middle schoolers and are a great way to get students to read newspaper articles—and then to hear them comment. 

After reading the stories, the students are able to post a response.

Students log on in a very safe manner and are able to access TweenTribune at home. I’m able to check the blogs before they are published and able to print them.   

My students were sharing stories with each other and having a great time writing a response. They are proud to be published writers. I introduced this website on Thursday and many students logged in at home over the weekend! 

The responses have to be at least 25 words.  At first students were unhappy with that number, but as they started to respond, they realized how easy it was to accomplish.  Students came in the next day and asked if we’re going to read new stories again. 

In response to the article, “Suspended over long hair. Is it fair?” Korie posted: I don't think that it is fair that a four year old would get suspended for having long hair. There are students in my middle school with hair longer hair than him that don't get in trouble for it.

I recommend this site to all teachers.  The students are engaged and they are reading and writing at the same time.  Check it out: http://tweentribune.com/.

Getting a Word in Edgewise: Wordle

Missed the Just One Hour workshop on Wordle? A recap:

Horizontal, vertical, or any-which-way, Wordle makes it fun to, well, get a word in edgewise—visually. Wordle is an easy web-based program at wordle.net that allows you to create a graphic representation of text. Because it quantifies text (the more often a word or phrase appears, the larger it is represented), it can be used to compile or summarize data.

Most important, students love it.

So, how can you use it to promote student thinking in your classroom? What kinds of text can you use?

21 Ways to Use Wordle
1. Visualize a brainstorm session

2. Compile data from classroom polls

3. Create a graphic autobiography

4. Guess the ___________________ (story, novel, event)

5. Write a headline for a current event

6. See similarities and differences

7. Identify criteria for ____________

8. Show class rules

9. Present spelling lists in various fonts

10. Examine student writing (Overused words? Important details missing?)

11. Study an author’s tone

12. Display your syllabus

13. Discover main ideas in text

14. Look for key ideas in important speeches

15. Draw inferences

16. Summarize

17. Show synonyms or antonyms

18. Make a custom illustration for a blog, story, essay, book report

19. Compare news stories for bias

20. Customize your word wall

21. Reflect on your thinking

On his blog Copy/Paste, Peter Pappas shares ways to use Wordle to promote literacy skills. Pappas suggests:

Defining skills
Before the dictionary comes out, give your students a new vocabulary word and ask them to brainstorm all the word they associate with it. Gather up all the brainstormed words for a Wordle. After the term has been formally defined, repeat the process and compare to the "pre-dictionary" Wordle.

Summarizing skills
As a pre-reading exercise, copy/paste text of reading into a Wordle and ask students to predict what the main ideas of the reading will be. Another pre-reading option: give them a Wordle of a non-fiction reading and ask them to use the Wordle to generate a title or headline before they see the real article. Post reading: ask them to reflect on the reading based on a prompt (for example, main idea, what you've learned, funniest element, etc). Then collect all their reflections into a Wordle.

Comparison skills
Give them two different accounts / essays on the same theme / event - let them compare the Wordles generated by each. Or you could generate Wordles for two different readings, then let student see if they can match the Wordle to its corresponding reading.

For GREAT Wordle ideas and tips created by teachers, see the collaborative project Tom Barrett and colleagues created as a PowerPoint slide show:


How to create your own Wordles for class (or, better, have your students create them)? Start here with a copy of our Just One Hour workshop handout, Then head to wordle.net.  It's really as easy as 1-2-3:  Click create, paste in any text, and click go.

A word of caution, it's addictive. In a good way. Have fun.

M.E.

PS Just found this great post by Iowa teacher Becky Goerend with sample student work!

Sources:
http://www.wordle.net/
http://peterpappas.blogs.com/ (Twitter: edteck)
http://edte.ch/blog/ (Twitter: tombarrett)
http://mrsbmg.blogspot.com/ (Twitter: MrsBMG)

Meet New Information. Change Your Mind.

Russian nesting dolls photo credit: Mollypop on Flickr Creative Commons

It's Monday after work, and I'm sitting in a Just One Hour PD session with Tanny McGregor and a great team of teachers. Hope she doesn't find my laptop notetaking a distraction while she's teaching. Today we're reviewing SYNTHESIS, in the Thinking Strategy Series. My notes:

Tanny likes to explain synthesis to students using concrete examples. She used the simile of nesting dolls. "When you think of synthesizing, picture nesting dolls," she says. One idea within another. As students continue to change their thinking, their thinking develops and grows. The original thinking may be embedded and still existing, but the new thinking is larger and different.

And Daniel Pink in A Whole New Mind uses the metaphor symphony. He writes, "Symphony...is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair."

Love this quotation from Tanny: "Meet new information and change your mind."

Tanny tells about asking Steph Harvey to define synthesis. She shared Steph's defining sentence stem:
I used to think __________, but now I think _____________.

Debbie Miller used Thinking Quadrants when modeling synthesis for our primary teachers:
1. Right now I'm thinking...
2. And now I'm thinking...
3. And now I'm thinking...
4. Now that I'm finished, I think...
Each stem falls in a quadrant of a graphic organizer. Nothing fancy, Tanny says, just fold a piece of paper in fourths. Each quadrant captures student thinking before-during-after reading. "I really like the idea of the four square model for working with my English Language Learners," ESL teacher Rachel tells me.

Tanny shared a turn and talk strategy from Kylene Beers that helps student synthesize their thinking after reading text (fiction or non-fiction). Beers calls it "Say Something." Here are the rules:
1. With your partner, decide who will say something first.
2. When you say something, do one or more of the following: make a prediction, ask a question, clarify something you misunderstood, make a comment, or make a connection.
3. If you can't do one of those five things, then you need to reread.

We talked about and practiced genre reformulation. That is, take what you've read and turn it into something else.  Options: lyrics with a familiar tune, a graphic representation (logo, sketch), an alphabet list, a pattern book structure (like Brown Bear, Brown Bear or The Important Book).  

Tanny shared a six-word-synthesis idea adapted from Smith Magazine's six-word memoirs. Amy K shared that she had used the six-word-synthesis strategy as an exit ticket for her middle school students. The six-word-synthesis is a great way for teachers to check for understanding. 

Finally, we worked with partners and shared our own synthesis of the book Fox, by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks. (This children's book is so beautiful and its story so profound I think I'm going to recommend it for my turn at book club.) 

My six-word-synthesis of this Just One Hour: 
"Not literary analysis. Literary thinking. Anew."

Miss the session? Our next Just One Hour in the Thinking Strategies Series is November 30 on schema and inferring.

M.E.

PS Here's the handout:

Getting to Know Gee

Have you met James Gee?

A virtual introduction is in order if you answer yes to any of the questions below.

• Do you think our current use of textbooks could be improved?
• Would you like to know how we can motivate students to love our lessons the way they love to play video games?
• Should teachers support students as thinkers instead of memorizers? 
• Would you like to understand how solid literacy instruction and 21st century skills can be taught in tandem?

James Paul Gee is the Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University, but that's just where he hangs his hat. His unique research extends around the world yet trickles down right into the classroom.  I first read Gee's work a few years ago when investigating the link between gaming and learning. It whet my appetite for more about kids in the 21st century and how we can embrace them as learners.

I could blog about Gee all day. Maybe you'd be interested, maybe not. The best way I can tell you about Gee, however, is to arrange a virtual introduction. Let's attend a lecture, read his bio and view a recent video clip. Then you'll see what I mean. Gee has a brilliant way of taking the here and now and merging it with best instructional practice.

Games, Not Grades
(from Edutopia, recently featured on Dan Pink's blog)

On Games and Learning
(from the MacArthur Foundation)

James Gee on The 4th Grade Slump
(from The Cooney Center)

Gee Bio Info
(from Wikipedia)

Visit these links and your thinking will be challenged and changed.

Every time I read or listen to James Gee, I walk away saying, "Gee, I never thought about it like that!"

Tanny

(Graphic created with wordle.net)

Thinking: Coming Soon to a Reader Near You!

Yes! Maurice Sendak on the big screen! I just can't wait until October 16th. Where the Wild Things Are has been one of my favorite picture books since it was first read to me in the 1960's, and now Spike Jonze is bringing it back to me 40 years later. I recall begging my mom to read the book slowly, to draw out those 10 sentences so I could wallow in the eerie-funny-imaginative world of disobedient Max.

10 sentences read aloud by my mom. One half-hour of fantasy for me.

10 sentences written by Maurice Sendak. One feature-length film from Spike Jonze.

This is precisely what we desire for every reader, isn't it? Thinking that travels deep into and beyond the printed page, thinking laced with emotion and escape. So what can we do to maximize the chances that this kind of real reading is available to every student?

There are obvious opportunities we can provide. Read aloud each and every day. Allow for student choice of text as often as possible. Build classroom libraries full of high-interest, level-appropriate books. Publicly model your own personal love affair with reading.

We can also get kids into the reading/thinking habit if we begin to offer and prompt metacognitive experiences. Through the years I've been banking a collection of thinking prompts, gleaned from conversations with colleagues, lab observations and online chatter. Partial list below.

• How do you know when you don't understand something?
• What do you do when your brain freezes/gets stuck?
• How can making mistakes help your brain grow?
• What kinds of questions do you ask yourself when you're reading?
• When do you know you should stop and reread?
• What do you do when you're reading and something just doesn't make sense?
• Why do you sometimes abandon a book?
• What kinds of connections do you make while reading?
• Have you ever noticed your mind wandering when you're reading? What do you do then?
• Do you ever make predictions while reading? Have you ever been right? Have you been wrong? How do you know?
  
• Which of your senses do you use in your brain while reading? Can you see? Smell? Hear? Taste? Feel?

Consider offering up one of these ideas at the beginning of class as bell work, or at the end of a lesson for closure. Sometimes you have an unclaimed minute here or there, or need a journal topic for a quick-write. Keep this list handy for times just like that.

Thinking. Let the wild rumpus begin!

Tanny

Far too numerous is the herd of such, who think too little and who talk too much.
John Dryden