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| Issue 38: Week of March 2, 2009 |
The LEARNING-FOCUSED Connections Newsletter is a weekly link to exemplary practice and ideas that will help you as an educator to increase achievement in your classroom and school. Some weeks there will be a mix of articles in the mailer; other weeks we will follow a theme. We are all working with the same goal in mind, continuous improvement in student achievement.
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LEARNING-FOCUSED Summer Institute on
Sustaining Exemplary Practices
July 13-17, 2009
Greensboro, NC
Sessions include: Training of Trainers and regular workshops for LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies, Reading Comprehension Strategies and Assignments, Learning-Focused Math, Differentiated Assignments, Vocabulary Instruction, Catching Kids Up with Acceleration, and Scaffolding Grade Level Learning. We are also offering Leadership sessions of Leadership, Balanced Achievement, and Accountability, and Starting and Sustaining Exemplary Practices. Additional full-day sessions include Toolbox Training, Toolbox Administrator Training, and Actualizing your Power Curriculum Training.
Early Registration Fee: $140.00 per person/day
Includes all session materials except Training of Trainers Redelivery Kits and Support which are purchased separately.
Registrations after May 1, 2009: $160.00 per day
Session and registration information now available at www.LEARNINGFOCUSED.com
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Ten Questions for Leadership by Barbara McSwain
It is easy for all of us to get
caught up in the momentum of wanting a quick solution for a problem.
Advertisers scream at us from every medium. Sales people drop by the
school. The mail is full of trade materials citing the latest gadget or
product. When reviewing products and services, the following questions may help administrators to define what
needs to be identified, adjusted or implemented in order to make good decisions
for a school/district.
1. How do I know the difference between a want and a need?
- What does my gap analysis tell me?
- Does the solution/product directly affect student achievement?
If you haven't done a gap analysis, you may want to check out our Exemplary Practices Gap Analysis in our new Starting and Sustaining Exemplary Practices book.
Another area that
often causes day to day problems for leaders is prioritizing.
Specifically prioritizing for time is almost non-existent in some
schools. Often whoever is making the loudest demand of the moment is the
person/item that receives the attention of the administration. These
questions may make it easier to prioritize the issue of time:
2. Do we know where we need to focus our
attention and actions in order to insure the biggest pay off in the success of our
school/district?
3. Have we set up systems in our
school/district that guarantee that we have time for Monitoring Instruction and
for Walkthroughs?
- Have I set boundaries with others which ensure that
they respect the need for Monitoring for Achievement and for
Walkthroughs?
We are bombarded with different thoughts regarding curriculum. Business
people are often confused about the education profession. One contractor
commented, "A teacher who teaches without basing instruction on state
standards is like a builder that builds a house without a
blueprint!" These are some questions that you may want to pose
regarding curriculum standards and LEARNING-FOCUSED:
4. Is the instruction in my school driven by state standards? How do I know?
5. What is LEARNING-FOCUSED Power
Curriculum?
6. What is the LEARNING-FOCUSED Model
Curriculum?
7. Are teachers posing Extending
Thinking questions to the most important state standards?
8. Does our school have assessment prompts in every lesson, a
scheduled review throughout the year, formative assessment and rubrics
consistently and pervasively?
It is important to
reflect on your needs regarding Leadership. LEARNING-FOCUSED helps
administrators make decisions about:
- Focusing on (2 - 4) goals
consistently and pervasively
- Monitoring for learning and achievement
- Providing teachers with high levels of support
- Providing substantial planning time
- Providing students with double dose learning
- Providing students with Acceleration
- Planning units and lessons
- Adapting, not adopting (programs, texts, etc...)
Recently
LEARNING-FOCUSED has developed additional Leadership materials to address the
questions posed in this article and others such as:
9. How do we develop a sense of urgency
in our school?
10. When is 'Good Enough' NOT good enough?
If you wish to
schedule a Leadership workshop for your district contact us at 866-95-LEARN or info@LEARNINGFOCUSED.com.
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 Differentiated Assignments 6-12 The ultimate guide for providing all students with opportunities to
learn! Differentiated Assignments is a practical approach designed to
help all students succeed in meeting standards. It targets practical
ways teachers can adapt assignments to reach diverse student learning
styles, readiness levels, and interests. Teachers learn to plan
meaningful short- and long-term assignments for all students in all
subjects with minimal time and stress. Provides an opportunity to
create assignments using four specific models that can be easily
adapted to different subjects. Differentiated Assignments leads to high level of student engagement
and success leading to a deeper understanding of the important content
and skills required by state standards. Develop tiered activities to
differentiate for readiness. This is differentiating without wiping out
teachers! A K-5 notebook is available as well. Differentiated Assignments 6-12SKU: 346 Categories: Catching Kids Up Collection Notebook:
$35.00
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An Exclusive
Questioning Technique by Carol Brewer
Questioning techniques define the way in which teachers ask questions. The typical is when a teacher
asks a question, the student answers the question, and the teacher moves on to the next
question. Instead, think about this questioning technique that includes
collaborative pairs, look back questions, summarizing, paraphrasing, connections
to real life, and writing all in one process!
Step 1: After reading part of the text (chunking), ask your students a question. Students talk with their partners to answer the question. Students respond
to the question aloud. (The typical procedure is for
teachers to go to the next question, but with this technique, you will take the question further.)
Step 2: Ask students, "Where did you find that information?" Students
work with their partners to look back in the text for the answer or reference to the
answer. Students read this information to the class.
Step 3: Ask students, "What does this mean?" Students
turn to their partners and talk about the meaning of the information in the text (summarizing
and paraphrasing). Students again share their response.
Step 4: Ask students for any kind of connections to the question and answer such
as, "Has this ever happened to you?" or "Do you know someone like this?" (Check the Reading Strategies for Assessments flipchart for follow up questions located on the Questioning Technique flip.)
Step 5: Students write on their graphic organizer the
information that has been summarized or paraphrased. You can follow up with a writing assignment
that reflects the information on the graphic organizer.
The Reading Strategies for Assessments Flipchart and Book are resources for this information and other ideas.
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| Helping Our Children Learn to Read
by Jennifer Partrick
We were not born to read.
Genes created during gestation are waiting at birth to be accessed in order to
do the jobs they were programmed to do. For example, genes for seeing, hearing,
movement, etc. were already there and programmed for the user to begin
using. Reading, on the other hand, is very different. There are no genes that are programmed for reading.
In order to read, the brain must build a new neural pathway. Learning to read
then requires tremendous attention to the task on the part of the student, in addition to the teacher.
Three critical components of reading are; being read to, phonemic awareness,
and a clear understanding of the alphabetic principle. The first component of
reading happens long before a child begins school. It begins with 'lap time',
those special times when children sit on a lap of a loved one or sit next to a
loved one and enjoy listening to stories, rhymes and poetry. It is at this
time that children begin to understand that pictures support the story, that
stories convey feelings that go with words, and the feelings can range from happiness to deep sorrow. Through the story
children learn about emotions and begin to understand empathy, as they relate to the characters in the books.
They begin to think about what it is like to be in another person's shoes.
Children also learn the language of text, which is
quite different from the conversational language. In our everyday speech we do
not use phrases like 'Once upon a time ' and 'They lived happily ever after.' Often, words used to enhance a specific type of text are not used in everyday language,
nevertheless, they support a
rich vocabulary. Generally, the language of books is Standard English which paves the way for
children's understanding of syntax. Through books children begin to understand
literary devices. In simple books like Curious George,
there are many examples of analogy, which children begin to understand long before they are taught this
aspect of writing. Children also begin to predict what they think will happen
next, as they make sense of the
story and gain an understanding of the characters. All of this is closely
related to reading and interacting with text.
Although many students come to kindergarten with little exposure to books, teachers
can still make a difference by making sure that time is set aside daily for
students to hear stories read aloud. At this time reading becomes visible, and students begin to glimpse what happens as
one reads and interacts with text. Students then begin to mimic their teachers, as they apply the same strategies when they
begin to learn to read.
The next predictor of how well children will read is the ability to hear and
manipulate sounds, especially rhymes and alliteration, and to name letters and their corresponding
sounds accurately and automatically. Through playing with sounds children
categorize words that share the same rime but different onset and words that
begin with the same sound. Wolf (1997) noted that "systematic play with
rhymes, first sounds, and last sounds in wordplay, jokes, and songs
significantly contributes to a child's readiness to learn to read" (p.
100).
Lastly, the ability to correctly and accurately name the letters of the
alphabet and their corresponding sounds is critical to reading. The ability to
correctly change the letter to a sound is directly related to decoding. In
order to decode words, students must first be able to change the symbols in the words
(alphabet) to sounds and then blend the sounds to make the word. Children first
learn to blend sounds in phonemic awareness lessons and then use that strategy
to help them decode words. Teachers must be sure that they have a volume of
games and activities that help students hear and manipulate sounds and help
them learn the alphabet. Teachers must be vigilant as they listen to their
students read and interact with text, to be sure that they are given the support they need in order to learn
to read.
Reference:
Wolf, M. (1997). Proust and the squid. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
See Learning to Read K-2 for more information and ideas.
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Administrators and coaches, pass them on to the teachers in your school;
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Past Connections Articles
Past Connections articles are available through the archive tool of this newsletter. Please click here to view the resources.
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more about, please let us know by emailing info@LEARNINGFOCUSED.com.
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