by Krissy.Venosdale | Sep 20, 2011 | Reflect
In the classroom, we encourage students to ask questions and we ask them questions. Why? Because that’s how you learn.
Little, skinny, easy questions allow us to get facts. One word or one sentence answers. Answers often brought to you by Google.
Big, fat, full of thinking questions make us dig deep into our brains, accessing prior knowledge, drawing on experiences, and formulating connections.
So, how do you know, as a teacher, if you’re asking the right kind of questions?
Watch for a reaction in your classroom. The good questions have a tendency to make kids squirm. They might make a face, pause, be speechless, doodle, or play with their hair as they think for a moment. That happy little puzzled look kids get when it’s a good question…it’s wayyyy better than a kid with their head on their desk. They might even get really excited and start moving around, so motivated to start that they can no longer sit still. They might even look like YOU are driving them crazy. That’s right…that’s a GOOD question. It can be hard, at first, to see that struggle and feel good about it. We are trained in college that when the kids know all of our answers, it’s a successful day for us. Nope. When they are challenged? That is success for us! That little struggle you’re witnessing is an extraordinary event taking place in their mind called, ‘”Thinking.” If you ask several of those kind of questions, you’ll end up with kids who start asking them, too. Resist every urge to tell them the answers or give them ideas. Allow them to formulate, plan, create, and design. Before long, learning will take over your classroom and kids will be discussing, thinking, reflecting, and even asking you questions. Don’t be afraid when you don’t know the answer. Embrace it. If you’ve inspired a kid to ask a question that you don’t know the answer to, I’d say that’s a success!
by Krissy.Venosdale | Sep 17, 2011 | Reflect
Do you know where you’re going?
Our entire lives are built around this. I’m going to work. I’m going to the dentist. I’m going to lunch. Class — we’re going to recess. Going. Going. Going. But, really, do you know where you are going?
We often post student goals on boards, papers, and hallways hanging around our schools. But, what if we wrote and posted our own teaching goals in our classrooms each week? What if we choose one important thing to focus on? I know, you’re probably thinking, ONE thing? We have so MANY. It’s hard to improve any of them. Remember, we don’t shout out all of the gradelevel math objectives on the first day for kids, that’d be too overwhelming!
We get buried in education with testing, data, school events, meetings, conferences, professional development. We gotta break it down. By setting one goal for ourselves each week, it’s manageable and allows us to keep our eyes on the learning.
Above all, let your students see that you have your own goals. Model learning for them. Show them that even after they’re finished with high school, college, graduate school, and have their own career, there will be a place for setting goals, for improving, and for learning.
Remember, teach a kid some facts and he’ll know stuff. Teach a kid to learn, and he’ll never stop.
by Krissy.Venosdale | Sep 17, 2011 | Reflect
A while back, I wrote a post about my quest to achieve “Proof of Learning” in my classroom. With everything I’ve taken away from eMINTS, Assessment for Learning, my experiences in the classroom, and reading about authentic assessment, I wanted a way to ensure that my students were not just “acquiring knowledge,” on their one day in our gifted pull-out program, but interacting, collaborating, and most importantly, building a connection with their learning. After all, it’s THEIR learning, not mine.
So, here we are, a few weeks into school and the GEAR binders have been set up! I have created some simple forms to get the learning in GEAR, but knowing that adding photos, notebook paper, and even a napkin doodled on might be possible examples of learning for the future. For now, kids are reflecting. I’m hearing conversations and discussions that show me that they are learning. Most importantly, they OWN the learning. Our little half-sheets are our “Logs” that we fill out at the end of the day and define how the learning applies to ourselves. It is very hard for students to do this. They want to choose an answer. They want to find an answer on a page. It’s what they are used to. I’m watching them struggle with not being able to find an easy answer, and I know, that is the moment we wait for. The moment they are learning.
I’ve compiled the files in a PDF and that you can see here. This is a work in progress. As I learn more, I’ll be editing, updating, and revising it based on my students’ needs. Isn’t that what REAL learning is all about?
by Krissy.Venosdale | Sep 15, 2011 | Reflect
Just a warning. Do NOT read Seth Godin’s book “Poke the Box” unless you want to, well, be inspired. It’s a manifesto, about getting started. How often do we think of ideas that “might work” in our classrooms, but fail to ever try them because…. (shudder) What if they DON’T work? Well, sometimes to find a better way, you’ve gotta experience failure. You might try something new with your students and it might be awful. But, it might also be the stepping stone to something big.
The irony here is that I teach my students this idea every single day. Take a risk. Try it. Don’t worry about what people think of your ideas. Then, I turn right around and fail to hear my own words. What if people don’t agree? What if this doesn’t work? Well, we can’t do this, it’s too different from the norm. The excuses pile up like a ginormous mountain. It’s extra easy to place blame on other people. The excuses get so high that you can longer see the top of Mount Excuse. But, it feels nice to sit there, all safe, and know that things are the same.
Except….. it doesn’t feel good. My favorite line from the book: “If you can embrace the idea that your success and happiness are tied up in defeating the fear that’s holding you back, you’re 90 percent of the way to where you need to go.” That mountain of excuses? Just get started and you might see that all it was to begin with was a molehill.
by Krissy.Venosdale | Sep 11, 2011 | Reflect
The young students I now teach were not even born when the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States occurred. The majority of my students have never been to New York. Most of them know few details about how the events unfolded that September morning. It made me realize that the photos to them are now as hard to comprehend as photos I have seen of events such as the Vietnam War. A black and white image, on the page of a book, somehow seems like something that just ‘happened’. It is hard to connect with a photo in a book. How can we ensure they understand the significance of an event that occurred before they were even born? We must not focus on dates, facts, or pages in a history book. This event is about what it means to be an American. We have to teach our kids in a way that they can connect with. History, without connections, is just ‘stuff’ that happened. It needs to be more. It’s about life. It’s about pride in your country. It’s about pride in who you are.
When Veteran’s Day rolls around in November, is it just another day for a coloring sheet of an eagle? Or, can we invite some older veterans in for donuts and milk and chat with them. Is Memorial Day just a day off of school? Or can we collect items to deliver to a local Veteran’s Hospital with handwritten notes that say “Thank you.” When kids learn about the Revolutionary War, do they truly understand what it meant for our country to be free? Or, is it something just taken for granted. It is our obligation not to teach facts and lists of information, but instead teach what it means to have pride in your country and yourself. By teaching that, we honor those that lost their lives on September 11 every single day.
Photos of the St. Louis Art Hill Flag Memorial for September 11.
