Motivation Matters

Enjoy a Laugh

MOTIVATION Matters

“Motivation is fickle; it’s not as simple as making a connection

with students at the outset of the lesson. We have to maintain their interest.”

                          ~ Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey

Click on 31 Signs You Have Been a Teacher Too Long from the International Reading Association. I know you can use this information in some way! It might take a minute to load—worth it!

Besides the above humorous link, I  recommend the latest issue of Educational Leadership. September's issue is titled MOTIVATION MATTERS, and is literally filled with note-worthy articles. Find someone who has a copy and borrow.

DANCING WITH THE STARS

My FOUR favorites: (so far)

Four (Secret Keys to Student Engagement)

by Robyn Jackson and Allison Zmuda.   FOUR STAR

Dimensions (or Keys)	Students Ask	Teachers Ask
Clarity	What’s my goal?	What do I want students to accomplish?
Context	What’s in it for me?	Why do they need this?
Culture	What have I learned from this classroom to help me persevere?	How can I support students?
Challenge	What's is my game plan and my on-going strategies?	How can I balance challenge and support?

Close Reading without Tears by Nancy Boyles  FOUR STAR

Text sets are the perfect match for how texts work and critical thinking. Excellent questions for Standards 1-9 provided.

Reading Time with Goals in Mind by Jennifer Serravallo  FOUR STAR

Students set goals to make independent reading time more purposeful. Teacher and student work together to set goals.

Designing Relevant Learning by Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey FOUR STAR Go beyond “because you need to know this next year."

         For the past few weeks I have been working on a Close Reading project. Can't seem to finish, but it's looking good. Will share real soon. 

Before beginning Season 2, I vowed I would only post when I had something to give you to make your job easier, or something I felt you couldn't live without. Most likely, I will not blog EVERY Saturday since that is a pretty tall order! I do appreciate you checking in on me. Have a wonderful 3-day holiday, and a very Happy Saturday.

WPS! Go Hogs!

       Teaching Urgency
         Three Ways that WORK

Used through Creative Commons

The summer I turned 16, I landed my first job as a motel maid. Midway through the season, the owner popped into the room I was cleaning and told me he was going to have to let me go because I was too slow. I was devastated (and incredibly embarrassed)!!! Fortunately, I was able to talk him into giving me a second chance. Here’s the deal: I wasn't purposely trying to avoid work. I was simply day dreaming and got lost in time. Well, I learned a BIG life lesson that day.J

Getting the Year Going

More than anything else, establishing routines and procedures for managing independent learning is a must do for teachers. According to experts, it is imperative we do two things during the first two weeks:

·       Help students think about themselves as learners

·       Establish the context so our students will thrive

Lastweek, I provided a descending table of learning time and also strongly suggested that before student goal setting take place make sure the kids understand what they have control over. For today, my question is: 

How can we get students to sustain a sense of urgency? Is it even possible? 

In most cases, we can get students to work with a sense of urgency for a day, an hour, and/or an activity. Our goal for our soon-to-be students is for them to be good managers of time and self-starters. A genuine sense of urgency is a highly positive and powerful force. (Kotter, 2012). This behavior is part of growth mindset and can be taught. 

Maintaining a Sense of Urgency

i.e., ENGAGEMENT

Here are THREE power-packed ways to make this happen:

Build solid relationships- kids won’t take us seriously if we don’t walk the talk. Share your own struggles with time. Don’t forget to share some of the strategies that have/ have NOT worked for you. DID YOU KNOW our brain remembers only the good and bad experiences that occur each day. Apparently, neutral experiences don’t make it into the memory bank. Make sure you have more positive than negative interactions with your students.

Provide Meaningful and Intentional Feedback-Do not praise the obvious. Praise learning attempts and students' struggle. Use phrases like “I can see you are working hard.”  Praise specifically what you want to see repeated and spell it out for kids so they have a clear understanding. Make sure they know what they did that eventually brought them success or to that particular point (think process). We want to be teaching on a strategic level, i.e., by remembering what I did with this problem, it will will help me go through the same steps with a similar one.

Set and Use Time Limits-If students have a set time to complete a task they stand a better chance of getting it done. If Ernie had told me up front, “You need to spend 30 minutes in each room” I would not have had an opening anecdote!J

You probably already use at least one of these timers. Just in case, I've included three super cool suggestions that will help motivate and encourage students.

 . 

iPad Countdown timers are a must in every classroom

Red Light, Green Light

Best Sand Timer

iPad Lab Timer for Experiments

As always, thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate your time and I hope you found something you can use.  Wishing you a very Happy Saturday.    

TEACHING URGENCY--STEP ONE

The Answer is 12,960 Hours

What is the Question?

Leveraging time has got to rank in the top three high-yield strategies—regardless of context. I remember watching a demonstration of a life clock on Oprah. On the grim reaper side it was a bit creepy to see how many remaining minutes of your life statistically are left. I suppose the non-techie version would be the Medicaid tables :)  Seriously, we all know how fast time slips away, but unfortunately our students don’t (get how time slips by).

So here’s my question I would like to explore: What can teachers do to teach students to value their time and to build a sense of urgency within the students? 

       No pun intended, but this is going to take some time to figure out…since getting kids to value time and having (any kind of) a sense of urgency is the BIG goal of all teachers. We want students to use their time wisely in class. We’re not so much talking behavior management as much as having them authentically develop and hone a life skill. Why? To make their lives better.

FIRST, let's start by answering how much classroom learning time students have--give or take. The table came from my book, Unharnessing Student Power: Building Grit. The estimate of 6 hours was just that--an estimate.

How Much Time Do Our Students Really Have?

.

                               Days in one school year = 180 days

                              Hours in classroom for one school day = 6 hrs*

Hours in classroom for one school year = 1080 hrs

   TOTAL HOURS spent in classroom = 12,960 hrs**

                                                 * I took off an hour for lunch and breaks

**Not counting preschool, kindergarten, lunch, or absences

Grade	At the end of year total hours spent	Total learning time  left at the end of year
First Grade	1,080 hours	11,880 hours
Second Grade	2,160 hours	10,800 hours
Third Grade	3,240 hours	9,720 hours
Fourth Grade	4,320 hours	8,640 hours
Fifth Grade	5,400 hours	7,560 hours
Sixth Grade	6,480 hours	6,480 hours
Seventh Grade	7,560 hours	7,560 hours
Eighth Grade	8,640 hours	4,320 hours
Ninth Grade	9,720 hours	3,240 hours
Tenth Grade	10,800 hours	2,160 hours
Eleventh Grade	11,880 hours	1,080 hours
Twelfth  Grade	12,960 hours	0

      The funny thing about data is that it allows us a different perspective. When I was being ornery back in 8^th and 9^th grade, I could have used this reality check. Letting the students know how much time they have (or not) seems like a good place to start. For most grade levels all or parts of this table could be calculated by students. Hmmm... the questions are pretty straightforward.

How many hours have you been in school so far?

How many hours of classroom time before you            

graduate?

As follow up to this particular lesson, students write and              answer:

What did you gain from your 1,080 hours last year?

What do you expect gain from your 1,080 hours this           year?

Once students see how quickly their opportunities diminish, in terms of school learning time, they need to realize that HOW they use their classroom time is completely within their area of control. Consider the following as a follow up activity: 

       What are the things in life you can, you partially can,         and you cannot control? 

This can be easily done by students using a double circle map, a tree-map, or a Venn. Answering these questions would make for a rich collaborative activity based on the discussion and debate generated.  In addition, the activity naturally segues into a mini unit on goal setting.

                                                                                                              

   

                       

             

I would like to add one more thing which I think is the most critical part of today's post. We must be REAL with our kids in these types of lessons. By that I mean, we need to disclose our own failed attempts and struggles with managing our time. Isn't this one of our life-long battles?  

       I could go on, but instead, watch for many more ideas on building a sense of urgency with our students in the weeks to come. Finally, I would love to know How you create a sense of urgency in your classroom? Please share in the comment section below.

As always, I want to thank you for stopping by. I really appreciate your time. I know many of you are gearing up. Beginnings are always so exciting. Wishing you a

 Happy Saturday.              

                                                                         

Which Common Core websites made the Best of the Best List?

My FAB FOUR

Websites for Teaching CCSS

photo from Photogen

It’s good to be back. This officially marks the beginning of Season Two. Common Core has gotten a bad rap over this past year. It has been brutally bashed, politicized, and crucified in some regions…so much so, that my husband (who remains loyal and would defend most all of my actions) sat me down and sternly asked “Tell me more about this Common Core.” 

      As I told him, I taught Common Core my last year in education (the 2011-2012 school year). There were no assessments from PARCC or Smarter Balanced. We followed the Gates’ Maps and were “doing” C.G.I. (Cognitive Guided Instruction) math without much/any training. Our school district was already doing business with an Arkansas based company called The Learning Institute who steered us with pacing and frequent periodic formative assessments. Life was good!

I felt like we had stepped back into the thematic teaching of the 90's but were well armed with the knowledge from the past twenty years. To me, not only was it fun to plan and fun to teach, the kids enjoyed the curriculum as well. They made countless connections throughout the school day. In fact, they thrived. We still taught algorithms in Math, but did a lot with mental math, and according to their next year's math teacher, DID NOT do nearly enough with deconstructing numbers. 

The biggest moment of truth for me was realizing how short-sighted my student expectations had been prior to CCSS. Ironically, if asked, I would argue and defend me always having very high expectations for my students. The Common Core curriculum proved me wrong. The rigor and the demands from CCSS are exactly what our students need. By the way, does any teacher ever claim to have low expectations for students? J 

Here’s the deal for today. I have promised a few folks some of my favorite CC links, so I thought I would share them here in the blog. They are in no particular order.

1.    http://www.pinterest.com/abchenhouse/

Many of you know I am a Pinterest junkie and I fell in love with The Hen House, Arkansas’ Common Core Pinterest Board, last summer. I have tried to keep up-to-date with their pins on my boards, but have fallen behind. There are 177 boards set up by grade level and each of the Gates’ modules. Some boards are more bountiful than others. 

Serves Grades K-12

2.     http://commoncorepcssd.wikispaces.com/PCSSD

I found this link last summer from Pulaski County Special School District in Central Arkansas, and almost cried when I thought I had lost the link. The organization makes it easy to navigate. Although some of the links are not available [to us], many are. In the middle of the page you will see the grade span to click on.

Serves Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8

       3.  http://rogers.ss5.sharpschool.com/cms/One.aspx?portalId=3091742&pageId=3426721

The Rogers School District in Northwest Arkansas is pretty spectacular. I see they have recently revamped their website. Fortunately, it is still available to all. 

Serves Grades K-5*

It may contain higher grade levels...just haven't found them.

4.   http://oaklandk12-public.rubiconatlas.org/Atlas/Browse/View/Calendars?DoSubmit=1&SchoolFilter[]=19&Page=1&

I found this resource a few months back and still have notmade time to unlock its complete charms. As you click open the link listed above, you will see a menu on the left side: 1. Click on grade level. 2. Click on subject 3. Click on Browse. There are complete 5-week lesson plans on this website.  For example, after clicking on second grade writing you will be brought to this page. Click on #4 OPINION: Using the Power of Reviews. Tell me this isn't an amazing score! 

Serves Grades K-12

Screen shot of what you are looking for in order to get to lesson plan links

Well, there you have 'em...my FAB Four Common Core links. I hope you have time to play with these links and would love it if you would respond with your favorite Common Core links in the comment section. Help me build a list. If you respond with a link and it makes the list, I will send you a FUN treat J

Finally, what’s in a Name?

Something I did not do, in my very first blog last August was to mention anything about the blog’s name. At the time, it seemed indulgent, but in retrospect, perhaps, it was just plain rude. Obviously, the Common Core part is a no brainer. The Saturday Morning Coffee part was not so much referring to my publishing on Saturday mornings (although I do), but really to capture the essence of what Saturday mornings mean to me—and possibly to you, too. For me, Saturday mornings have always meant shedding the structure and confinement of week day work to become completely open to life’s possibilities. I wanted to capture that same freedom of thought for my blog.

        As always, I want to thank you for stopping by. I really appreciate your time. I am hoping your summer has been restful, rejuvenating, and FUN. Here’s wishing you a Happy Saturday.