Creating Lifelong Learners

I enjoy fielding questions about Independent Work Time.  This one comes from a teacher whose students “refuse to work” (cue scary music):

…I still haven’t been able to have an effective IWT time.  The children just refuse to work independently.  I can’t work small group with children in need of extra support.  I have 24 reg. ed students and 4 mainstreamed children.  I need to help them.  When I let them go and have the Must Do/May Do, they sit and talk and play.  They do absolutely nothing.  I am extremely frustrated.  I have NEVER in my entire teaching career had a class like this one.

First I would reframe the discussion about the classroom situation.  While students are sometimes defiant, to suggest that a classroom of 29 students are all simultaneously defying a teacher’s directions seems statistically implausible.

Rather than saying the students are “refusing to work” independently, can we say that the students do not yet know how to work independently?  The solution then lies in our control…it’s our job to teach them how to work independently.

I know that this teacher has listened to my Independent Work Time CD but somehow they missed a key point which is that you should not give student multiple must dos and may dos until they are able to complete a single must do independently within a limited (5-10 minute time period) while you monitor and take notes.  This training period needs to last until students are able to complete the 5-10 minute single must do with about 80% success.

You must set up behavioral expectations before beginning the one must do and you must revisit those expectations at the conclusion of the work period to debrief how it went.  I have not seen this class but I would doubt that there is not even a single student who is trying to do work.  By recognizing the students who are working, good behavior will slowly begin to spread.

If it’s  still going badly after this, then you need to take a look at what you’re assigning students to do and make sure that it is, in fact, work they can complete independently.  I would also make sure that the work isn’t completely boring.

Your thoughts?

Thank you to those of you who attended my workshop, “RTI:  A Complete Apple Workflow” at the CUE conference this weekend.   I spoke about using Apple Software to address your Response to Intervention program.  This post contains the links, resources, and ideas that I shared.  Rather than simply posting the keynote file (which is much easier) I prefer to recap and flush out some of the ideas so that it’s beneficial even to those who weren’t there.

What is RTI?

As I define it, rather than simply teaching everyone the same thing and assuming that if someone doesn’t “get it” that there’s something wrong with them, RTI assumes that there will be students who do not master a concept after whole group instruction and will need additional time and intensity (interventions) to master concepts.  This, of course, is very similar to the idea of Independent Work Time.

Alice Mercer, in her CUE presentation, also addressed RTI and went into additional detail in defining it.

Part One:  Dealing with Data

It’s very important to collect and analyze data in order to target interventions to specific student need.  ”Fluency” is to vague to be an intervention.  Focusing on short vowels, long vowels, or digraphs is a better intervention because it targets a specific student need.  Using Apple’s iWork (Pages and Numbers) or even Microsoft Word’s (Office and Excel) can help you to organize data by creating a spreadsheet, graphing data, and using the word processor’s mail merge functions to create parent reports about student data.  I much prefer iWork to Office because of its ease of use and the ability to create better looking documents.

Here’s additional information on graphing in Numbers and how to use the mail merge function.  I taught both these things in the workshop.

Part Two:  Prescriptions for Success ways of using Apple technology to address student needs

Fluency

• Use Garageband to record students doing Reader’s Theater and then add photos via iMovie or Final Cut Pro

Find free Reader’s Theater scripts here

See two of my projects done this way…The City Mouse and the Country Mouse and Tales from the Yard

• Use iPods with Voice Recorders to have students record their voices or have students record their voices directly into Garageband.

Find a voice recorder

Find out more about these techniques through Escondido Unified’s iRead Project

Comprehension

• iMovie projects which focus on unit themes and non-linguistic representations (as per Marzano’s Classroom Instruction That Works)

See our example for the Look Again Camouflage Unit

Read about how vocabulary is scaffolded for such projects

Behavior

While behavior tracking software is popular among schools with large behavior problems.  I saw office referrals eliminated in my classroom simply through working on these movie projects.  I gave the example of Joseph, a student who I knew would not be quiet if I was to call “Quiet on the Set.”  Instead of playing through that scenario and getting annoyed at Joseph ruining other students’ projects, I decided to make Joseph the engineer.  He called out “Quiet on the Set!” and he pushed the red Garageband button.  The rest of the class was dead quiet and Joseph experienced being a successful and productive member of our class rather than being the one who wrecked everything.  This is a behavioral intervention…intervening to improve student behavior rather than punishing students for bad behavior.

Evidence

Here are two slides that show some evidence that these techniques are producing gains although I am the first to admit that we need to continue collecting data on the subject.

In my classroom, I saw an 18% increase in the number of students reading at benchmark 12 weeks after working on the Reader’s Theater script, The City Mouse and the Country Mouse:

In Escondido Unified, they saw average gains of about 40 words per minute after six weeks of reading with iPods whereas normal gains are about 10 words per minute:

Bonus

Here are some incidental things I mentioned in my presentation.

HandBrake for ripping movies from commercial DVDs  you own for storing on iPod.

PWN Youtube and other ways of downloading Youtube movies.

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Independent Work Time, a time when students are working on their own while the teacher works with small groups.  It’s an official part of our reading curriculum but should really be a part of every teacher’s day in some form or other since it is one of the few times you can differentiate your teaching.  It also pays off in dividends if you’re able to teach your students to work independently.

I’ve answered some questions about Independent Work Time before:

IWT FAQ

What Do I Do During IWT?

Additional Articles on Independent Work Time

Here’s a new question about debriefing, those few minutes of wrapping up loose ends at the end of IWT:

Hi Mathew!
I am a 2nd grade teacher in AZ and I purchased your CD and have followed it for 3 weeks now. So far, it is working wonderfully for me. However, I haven’t been very faithful about the debriefing time after IWT is over mainly because when our IWT is done then it’s time to go out for recess and the kids (and myself) are in a hurry usually.  Should I continue to do the debriefing all year?  If you consider it important, I will try to do it more consistently.  I guess I need to allow a 5-10 min. time before recess to debrief the kids.  Also, we are mandated to have literacy centers that cover the “big 4″:  Comprehension, Phonics, Fluency, and Vocabulary. How would I work that in with the Must Dos and May Dos?  Thanks in advance.

I do feel that debriefing is important and should ideally be done every day.  However, if behavior is not a problem, it would be less important and in the real world there will be days you don’t get to it.

Invariably there will be small problems that come up and get bigger over time and if you don’t debrief, it’s difficult to address them.  Also, debriefing is the time when you can talk about the work itself and hold students accountable to having finished it.  For example, asking “Who found out something new in their research today?”  “Who revised their writing and how did you make it better?”  If you never debrief then students might get the message that there aren’t specific skills they’re working on.

In terms of your mandated centers, they can be either must dos or may dos.  Certainly there are more engaging ways and boring ways to address the same skills.  Your creativity will go a long way in planning those centers.  Good luck.  -Mathew

How about you, how is debriefing working in your classroom?

To paraphrase Chris Lehman in his five minute Ignite Philly speech on the Schools We Need:

Good data costs more than we want to spend in this country and the best data is the data that teachers collect every day.  The best data is the work kids do every single day.

I agree with this statement.  Teachers are constantly collecting qualitative data about their students that is just as valid as any quantitative data collected from tests and quizzes.  However, as valid data we need to treat it as such. While every teacher has a vague idea of the academic progress of his/her students, it is the skillful teacher who that data to strategically plan instruction and monitor progress.

I think the best way to use this collected data is to record it.  Speaking for myself, in the course of a particular lesson I notice that Sally has trouble with the spelling of long u and Tommy doesn’t know how to rhyme and it’s crystal clear to me in that moment in time.  However, by the time I’ve gotten home at night, unless I’ve written this down and made a plan, I’m just kind of praying that Tommy and Sally might practice these skills and come back to me tomorrow “fixed.”

I don’t have any elaborate recording system for these things.  However, what I’ve been starting use is a low cost program called MacJournal from Mariner Software.  This is a mac only program.  I’m sure there is a PC equivelant, please leave a comment if you know of one.  This is basically a journaling program (as the name implies).  It allows you to create mutliple journals and multiple entries.

What’s different from a program like Word is that each entry is automatically dated and collected with all the others.  There’ s a search box so you can search for names of students or particular skills (e.g. search for any reference to Tommy or any reference to rhyming words).

What’s different about this from an online gradebook is that a gradebook is for recording numbers.  Numbers have their place but they belong to the less useful category of data.  A journal allows us to keep track of what’s between the lines.

I use it very simply, just to make a few notes that are stored and recorded for me to find later to make independent work time groups or plan mini-lessons.  I don’t necessarily write in complete sentences and I don’t write about every student every day.  I just jot notes down when they occur to me on a post-it and then transfer it to the journal.  This is a new thing for me so I’ll let you know how it goes. I am open to suggestions and would love to hear how you keep track of data.

How do you keep track of student data?

Here’s a visual of a strategy for working with small groups during Independent Work Time at the elementary level.  This works if  you have at least a 20-40 minute block of time to work with students and can spend at least 10 minutes with two groups each day.

The idea is that you meet briefly with your students are lowest in a particular skill every day but you do not ignore students who need enrichment or those who need just a little bit of help to get to the next level.  It’s a mistake to spend much longer than ten minutes with your struggling students as the law of diminishing returns kicks in after awhile.

Let’s assume you’re working on fluency…in ten minutes with your lowest readers you can review sight words, do phonemic awareness activities (such as oral blending and phoneme replacement…change the sound /b/ in bat to /c/ = cat), phonics activities (like the phonemic awareness activities but with letter cards or white boards), AND  read some decodable text.

With your middle and higher students you can work on Reader’s Theater or something like literature circles/book clubs where the group is all reading the same book and you come together to discuss it.

However, this post is more about the management of your IWT/Workshop that I hopes makes it seem possible to both address struggling students and challenge/enrich others.

You will, of course, need to adapt the timing to the size of your class and groups.  Also note that you don’t want to keep the same students in the same groups all the time, their grouping depends on the skill that you’re working on at the time.

I received this question by e-mail today:

Hello Mr. Needleman,  I was wondering if there was an Internet source or a book that gives ideas for Workshop?  My school is a “Ditto” and “Worksheet” IWT kind of school and I am scrambling for ideas.  I am starting IWT over today and am hoping for ideas soon.  I have asked fellow staff members but other than the worksheets, they have not been of help. I teach 3rd grade and my students reading abilities range from None-to 3rd.  Thank you so much.

And it reminds me of a question I asked my coach, “Where do we find all these fabulous activities to do during Workshop/Independent Work Time?

It took me a while to realize that it’s not about finding and adding additional material to your day.  It’s more about extending and expanding the work you are already doing in class.  If you agree that Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites then you probably agree that there are probably enough worksheets in the Open Court Reading Program that we don’t need to add any more while students are working independently.  Instead, this is the time that students get authentic experiences putting the skills the workbooks expose them to to good use.

Here are some program areas you can extend for IWT/Workshop:

Blending/Word Knowledge (students practice reading the words, complete word sorts, or use the letters to make new words—like Making Big Words books)

Decodables (partner reading, highlighting target sounds or high frequency words then sorting those words)

The Concept/Question Board (when do students have a chance to interact with the board, answer questions, and add to concepts?  If students have brought in artifacts this is when students can explore them, write about them, and ask questions)

Inquiry (not so much the Inquiry Journal but real inquiry and research…find the answers to your questions…read a book, find a web site…make a book, a poster, an oral presentation, a movie, a puppet show, etc. to present your work)

Writing (students complete writing projects you’ve started together, write a letter to the class pen pals, or write to (gasp) communicate perhaps a song, a poem, a play…if you’ve ever modeled it they can do it)

Reading (students can read for pleasure and explore books related or unrelated to the units…they can log books they read, prepare books reports, write a sequel, or do something else Beyond Book Reports.

Reader’s theater (it’s free and increases fluency according to research)

Over time you can add some of these activities as well which might be may do’s:

• Listening center (students listen to tapes of the stories or other audio like famous speeches)
• Multimedia center (a computer with headphones allows students to watch unit related movies or explore links
• Games found at the 99 cent store, as you find them add them to your repetoire

You may notice that all of these activities require very little preparation.  I was criticized on my post about differentiation for expecting all teachers to be superstars.  I don’t.  I admit I’m a lazy teacher and all of these activities will take you less time than running off worksheets with more engaging and beneficial results. It’s not about working harder but working smarter and letting go of an attachment to ditto machines.

I invite my readers to post their own ideas and any questions you have below.

For additional information on Independent Work Time/Workshop see related posts.

Now is about the time that you begin to hear grumblings in the teachers’ lounge about the lot we’ve been given and their ability to work independently.  One of the things that makes me cringe is to hear that a particular class of students will not be doing independent work time this year because “these students” don’t know how.

My answer is that of course they don’t know how.  It’s our job to teach them.  Independence is not a state standard but it is essentially a content area.

Not teaching students how to work independently is like not teaching students how to read because they don’t know how.  Yes, some classes come in and they work better on their own than others but if they can’t work on their own, that’s where you come in.

Don’t give up on your independent work time because students don’t know how to do it.  Those students who don’t know how to work independently are the ones who need you the most.

For more information see:

• Questions about Independent Work Time
• Give Up Control
• Independent Work Time.com

NPR reports on the commercialization of children’s play which has shifted in the second half of the twentieth century from an emphasis on activities towards and emphasis on specific toys and rules.

“(in the first half of the century) [Children] improvised their own play; they regulated their play; they made up their own rules…but in the second half of the 20th century…play changed radically.  instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined scripts…a trend whih begins to shrink the size of children’s imaginative space.”

The damage is that researches have seen a decrease in children’s self regulation, an ability to “control their emotions, and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.”

“Today’s 5-year-olds [are] acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today’s 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago.”

I’ve written previously about allowing children to play whenever possible, even integrating that into your Independent Work Time and existing curriculum.  For teachers of the Open Court Reading Program, I beg you to please implement independent work time and to allow that to be a time when students make some of their own choices and begin to self-regulate their own behavior.  It’s a little more chaotic at first but by investing time in training you reap dividends later.  By moving students from center to center based on a rotation, you further take away from students opportunities to make decisions about their own learning.

We all want students to be responsible but do we give them chances to learn responsibilty?  Do we give them changes to exhibit creativity and problem-solving in our classrooms?

Also see Part One: Why? and Part Two: How?

If all this has seemed good to you, you may still be wondering how we fit this in when teachers are already pressed to the limit in terms of time management.

Direct Instruction

There will be times in every classroom when the teacher needs to address the whole class to demonstrate a skill, raise a question, or present new information. By employing technology, realia, and visuals, teachers can make their content comprehensible to more students than if they simply use their voice. Nevertheless, even the best direct instruction will likely leave out some students who still don’t get it and others who  already know it.   Classrooms that employ direct instruction for the majority of the day probably aren’t as effective as they could be in terms of making content comprehensible for all or as far as engaging students.

Fitting It All In

The way I have managed to fit it all in is to move as quickly as possible through direct instruction as possible so that I have time to move on to activities like I’ve written about in part two as well as a special time of day we call independent work time in which all students are working on their own while the teacher calls small groups to work on needed skills.

Teachers need to be getting to this dedicated differentiation time of day (IWT, Workshop, Universal Access Time, etc) as a bare minimum. However, differentiation is not just about a special time of day. In order to differentiate instruction, teachers need to value each student for the unique talents that each brings to the classroom and plan activities that allow them to demonstrate their learning in different ways.

While we await part 3 about when to “fit in” differentiation, I wanted to share some of the great info I’ve received in comments or e-mail from web site visitors.

Ken Pendergrass, elementary music teacher from Seattle, shares a differentiated lesson with impressive use of enhanced Garageband podcasting.

Alice Mercer, Sacramento computer lab teacher and founder of the superblog In Practice, shares the Pyramid Plan which is a good visual for a differentiated lesson with multiple objectives for students at different levels. (All students will learn X, some students will learn Y, a few students will learn Z).

Nancy Bosch, who has nearly three decades experience teaching gifted students offers these tips:

I think one of the things people miss about differentiation is they think it’s like the old days where every kid had a different plan. In a differentiated classroom the same material is taught, what the kid does with the material and how he makes sense of it is what is different. So the process and product is differentiated by ability, interest and learning preference.

Be sure to mention the work of Carol Tomlinson–she is the differentiation guru. Susan Winebrenner’s book, Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom is also helpful to some.

And I thank Steven Kimmi for helping me to clarify my thinking on differentiated instruction. While this conversation started from comments by a gifted parent, let’s not forget that it’s not only the gifted students who are bored in typical classrooms. Let’s make sure that everyone has access to technology, research and inquiry, and independent thinking. Otherwise the academically rich only get richer and the poor get much poorer.

Please keep the ideas coming.