Dynamite Lesson Plan

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This post is reflection on the first school day of 2008-2009 schoolyear:

The wierdest this today was looking in the mirror.  Let me explain:  When a schoolyear starts for a teacher there is a long routine of tasks you must do.  You have to get the room ready and make the classes with your grade level and get all your “ducks in a row” to make the room a place where your kids can learn in the coming year.  This takes a lot of time but after almost 10 years of doing it, there is a comfortable familiarity with it all.  In a way, you feel the same age as when you started year after year.

Walking by the window I caught a glimpse of my graying beard and I realized that I am not the 27 year old I was back in 1997 when I first started.  I’m married, I have a 1, 3, and a 10 year old at home to take care of.  I’m filled with much more knowledge but none of that will ever keep me young.  I’m sorry to admit this but being young forever sure would be nice.  If I didn’t have to worry about dying one day, imagine the teaching I could develop!  I’d be a dynamo machine that made every kid advanced.

I’m only joking, sort of.  I guess at 39 now I am thinking about my limitations more than my abilities.  Maybe that’s good, maybe it makes me better at what I do.  Limitations can help us use our gifts in a more focused way.  If we know they are all we have, we won’t fail to use them.  I know my strengths as a teacher and I plan to use them this year to bring my students to higher scores.  That’s the goal for them and for me.  While we make it there we will grow in other ways but the scores are the target and I feel energized that this year, as my beard inevitably continues to gray (metaphor and symbol) I will strive to use my gifts to make a difference in these 30 kids’ lives.  Bring on the 185, I’m more ready than I’ve ever been!

P.S. After driving home I heard an amazing song by ColdPlay that seems to be written exactly for the sentiment of this post.

As I wrote in my last post, setting up a classroom for the year can be a daunting task. Every district and every school have certain “non-negotiables” you must have up in your room on day one with the kids. At the same time, if you are into what you do as I am, you have your own standards you want to see put up and set in motion. For example, I have a guitar section where I teach after school guitar and sometimes use as a scaffolding tool to the math and language arts we are doing. It’s a lot to do and I have to hand it to my new principal for coming up with an excellent rule of thumb to know when your room is complete:

Would I want my own kids learning in it every day?

Excellent thought when it comes to creating a classroom environment.

I want to give teachers credit for something that most the public doesn’t know they do: Decorating their classroom walls.  Some of you may be saying: “Get over it, all that money we pay you to teach kids you shouldn’t complain.”  Mind you, I’m not complaining.  Rather I am shedding light on this  unsung task.

My mom once told me that ironing your clothes is something that no one will probably notice if you do but that everyone will notice if you don’t.  To a teacher, making walls is a lot like that.  You have to walk across campus and get huge rolls of butcher paper then come back and hang them.  The whole process involves a ladder, stapler, stepping back to eye straightness and repeating over and over again until the walls are covered.

But you’re not done yet!  Next you have to trim the tops and bottoms.  Once all that is done, you staple up the border that you purchase from your own pocket.  Each year it is minila, about $30 bucks.

Once all that is done, it is not the end, but only the beginning.  What will you put on them as you take in your 30 or so students to foster learning and show off their work.

Tomorrow I go back to teaching for the new school-year.  I expect to encounter some brick walls here and there and I look forward to the opportunity to get through them or over them as the case may be.  I also expect the joy of fostering learning in my 30-35 fourth graders.  It is a calling and an amazing privelege to educate the next generation.  My personal goal is to post here once a week or more with stories about the classroom and what is working.  If you find people fascinating as I do, please tune in and take this journey with me.

More on the brick walls is here.

Okay so I have 4 days until I go back to work setting up my classroom. The kids come the following week. There is a lot of obvious stuff to grab at the grocery store discount aisle but then there are those essentials that the average parent may not think of. Here are 8 things like that:

• Walking home/pick up rehearsal and quiz on possible scenarios.
• Clothes laid out the night before.
• Lunch arrangements.
• Role-play respect scenarios. ie; toward teacher scolding you, toward other students.
• Review how to “react” in a fight situation. My advice to parents is to always run and tell a teacher instead of fighting back.
• Talk about the importance of grade ______.
• Discuss incentives for good grades and good reports from the teacher.
• -and- Tell them a story of when you did the right thing in grade _______.

It would seem in Vegas, the bucks wear the crown.  I’d like to hope in California (and et. al other states where casino dollars don’t support education 100%) we have a little more of an ability to make choices apart from bucks, but I’m not going to lay a bet in it long ter.

My understanding is that the Vegas schools (and surrounding areas) are floundering on state tests.  I’ve also heard that teachers there make an embarrassingly low wage compared to other similar states.

We went to the “public library” yesterday on N. Las Vegas Blvd and the “Kids Museum” there was an absolute disgrace to the kids using the stuff there.  With all the money in those casinos (millions per day) is that the best they can do?  We paid $8 a piece to get in (and they charged my one year old) and when we got to a craft they said: “Oh you didn’t pay the premium price therefore you get no craft.”

I enjoy Las Vegas as an adult and I have a good time there as an adult but I fear the future there when kids are not put on a pedestal.

What are your thoughts on Casino taxes running the educational system?

I call this one “Que?” and I’d like to dedicate it to two of the funniest “chick bloggers” I read: Hot Coffee Girl, and All Rileyed Up. Here goes . . .

Scott was a wild 4th grader. He was the first out the door at recess and the last one in. He was also extremely funny to a first year teacher. While other teachers had given up on the hispanic lightning bolt, I was ready for the challenge.

Scott had developed a shocking trend of “mooning” people on the playground. It was first brought to my attention by the noon-duty aides and then later by other students. Each time I gave him a detention and he missed his recess . . . but the mooning continued so I wrote a note home.

Being a new teacher, I was not as savvy as I am now after almost 10 years. It didn’t occur to me that his parents might not be able to read a note in English. Scott accepted the note and I told him the customary warning that if he did not bring it back the next day signed, he would have no recess and there would be a call home.

When he brought the note back, I assumed the issue was resolved . . . but then recess came. Yup, he did it again. This time I had to schedule a parent conference. I spoke timid Spanish then but I did speak with his mother over the phone and she verbosely apologized in her native tongue. We made an appointment to meet about it and I made sure I had a bilingual aide on site available to clearly translate the meeting.

In the meeting Scott sat next to his mother and I began to explain how ashamed I was to be Scott’s teacher when he did this at recess. The mother listened to the translator and then replied in Spanish to the effect of: “I know, we hate it when we do it at home and at the store, but everybody slips sometimes you know?”

After hearing the exact translation I was astonished. I said with the clearest Spanish I knew: “le permiten removar sus pantalones en publico a veces?” If you don’t speak Spanish, I said “You allow him to take off his pants in public?” If you do speak Spanish, you can see I need some tutoring. Then she said:

“QUE?”

The woman flushed immediately and looked at her son with a furor I rarely see in moms. She babbled something quick and angry at her son, slapped him on the head and then said in broken English:

“He told us you were mad at heem ’cause he deen’t tuck hees shirt een.”

The next step of EDI is importance. Before I learned EDI I always tried to infuse this into my lessons. Unfortunately, I didn’t always get to it. EDI makes it mandatory and I know why: it is very effective.

Kids remember things when they have relevance to their lives. Using creativity to come up with what multiplication facts are important will raise test scores. It should be part of every dynamite lesson you do. Think about your own motivation to do work: if it wasn’t relevant to money, sense of happiness, etc. would you still do it? I wouldn’t. Give your kids the reason(s) your learning objective is important. You will be astounded at the results.

As we move closer to the meat of the lesson, CD brings us to what we call “The Big Picture.” Here , we examine with the students what exactly this lesson is all about and why it will be beneficial to learn it (also an aspect of another step we’ll cover later called importance.

Bring in realia, newspaper clippings, objects, music, etc. This is a great place to really make the learning objective come alive. It’s where you literally “develop the concept” for them. For example, if you are teaching simlilies, you would make examples and show them and make a “non-example” as well. Concept Development is a key ingredient to getting the mind open to the learning objective.

Madeline Hunter came up with the 5 step lesson plan in the 80’s and it has been the standard for making lessons. John Hollingsworth and Dr. Sylvia YBarra with a company called Data Works have now thrown their hat into the ring with a fast growing movement called Explicit Direct Instruction, or EDI. I’ve been working with it as a template for almost 3 years and I think it will become the next “5 step lesson plan” very soon. It is highly effective at getting kids to score high on standardized tests. Most people who follow education in this country know that is the mainstay of assessment nowadays. I’ll be writing a series on this method of lesson planning so watch for the proceeding posts. EDI is a great way to deliver a dynamite lesson plan.