Begin in small, yet important ways by asking: Do children regulate their own physical selves at school? Are they allowed to determine when and where they sit, stand, lean, and so on...
What if the environment was not limited to the physical school?
II. We might collapse the entire year into a statement about slowing down and noticing.
Last night my family and I traveled to Connecticut to attend the Masuk High School choral concert conducted by Dr. Robyn Gangi. What was so different from other concerts I have attended was that this was less a performance and more an invitation to watch a master teacher and his students create. It was intimate, deeply moving, and reminded me of the immense value of the arts. To move an audience requires keen intellect, grand empathy, and significant skill. All were displayed last night and had I polled the audience I am confident that there would not have been one among us who would not have said that these young people are 'career and college ready' with nary a paper test to be had.
Have a listen. This was from last night.
Here's the choral group in 2009 (and yes, it is announced at this engagement that the choral group had been invited to sing at the Vatican).
The arts matter in ways we are simply foolish to not acknowledge. As Maxine Greene says, they disturb us into awakening. They matter more than school math and school reading and the mountain of tests that accompany these subjects. They matter more than STEM and more than PISA results. They matter most, because they awaken the imagination allowing us to be better and (other)wise. Truly, in a world defined by its inter-connectivity, can there be anything as important as becoming (other)wise? Regardless of our economic circumstances, geographies, gender, ideologies, beliefs--we learn and express what it means to be human via the arts.
Who will our children become when the influence of the arts is denied, repressed, underfunded?
Secretary Duncan, alongside the increased testing that you have supported, funded, and championed that narrowly focuses on school math, reading and writing--the arts are being written out of school budgets and the very academic subjects you want to be privileged are being reduced to only that which can be tested. Now to be sure, I am not saying that you are the cause of this, but I am saying that your continued emphasis on high stakes testing makes the actions of school boards and administrators inevitable. This out-of-whack funding will only get worse when billions more are siphoned from public school budgets to pay companies to produce Pineapplegate-quality tests. More arts programs and deep engagements with learning will be underfunded, and along with these our children will be lost.
The idiocy of this is that the very outcomes your administration and moms like me seek can be found inside quality arts programs like Dr. Gangi's. The study of music is as scholarly as it is embodied; as serious as it is joyful. It is agency personified. Go ahead and look at these young people in Dr. Gangi's choral group and tell me that you cannot see their commitment and agency--hear their voice and skill.
Secretary Duncan, you need to help this country balance its priorities and can do so by recommending a moratorium on high stakes testing for just two years and in its stead fully funding the arts and teachers.
If you ask America's teachers, its local communities, and its artisans to solve the concerns related to student achievement--they will answer. It will be the start of a revolution that privileges children, not profits; method and outcome. By the way, Dr. Gangi is retiring from public education in a few weeks. Last night's concert and another scheduled in two weeks represent his final work with these students. He'll have some time on his hands and perhaps you could tap him and others like him who also are leaving public education and ask them to guide you.
If you ask, many will answer and nary a corporation will be among them.
Established in 1969 in association with the American Library Association (ALA), The Coretta Scott King (CSK) Book Award was developed to honor African American authors and illustrators. At that time, no African American authors or illustrators that point in time had ever received ALA’s prestigious Newbery and Caldecott Medals.
The CSK Book Award is given to African American authors and illustrators annually and its purpose is to recognize outstanding children’s books that “portray some aspect of the African American experience.”
The 2012 winners of the CSK Book Award are: Author Award
CSK Author Honor: The Great Migration: Journey to the North. Written by Eloise Greenfield (and
illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist). Amistad/ HarperCollins. (Grades 2-6)
CSK Author Honor: Never Forgotten. Written by Patricia C. McKissack (and illustrated by Leo
and Diane Dillon). Schwartz & Wade/Random House. (Grades 3-6). Available as a kindle text.
CSK Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement: Ashley Bryan is the third recipient
of this newly established award. It is given as tribute to Virginia Hamilton, a beloved children’s book author. Ashley Bryan is the author and illustrator of many notable children’s books including Sing to the Sun, Let It Shine: Three Favorite Spirituals, and Beautiful Blackbird.
There is an exhibit of Bryan's art at the North Carolina Museum of Art happening now through August: Rhythms of the Heart.
One of the challenges in conducting high intensity literacy groups where guided reading, guided phonics, and guided writing is conducted by a teacher with a small group of learners--is the quality of engagements that the other children are doing during these 20-minute lessons. Learning centers are only as viable as how well children are able to independently or buddy learn. With a handful of iPads loaded with specific apps, robust learning centers aimed at preventing reading difficulties can be realized in primary grades. Here's a few examples.
1. Alphabetic Center/Phonics
The goal at this center is for children to acquire knowledge of letters, letter formation, and their representative sounds. ABC Pocket Phonics allows children to practice segmenting phonemes and representing sounds with letters.
2. Oral Language, Writing Development and Storytelling
At this center, children work by drawing on the iPad and explaining a process or information they have learned. Using the screen casting app, Doodlecast, the children talk and explain what they are doing/understanding. The screen cast below was made at Dan Callahan's (@dancallahan) school in Massachusetts. When I watched it the first time I thought about all the potential oral language development that occurred as children gathered their ideas, wrote their sentences, drew and read what they had written. In the video below, first grade children from Dan's school are explaining important parts of the flower. In many ways they are composing a beginning essay.
Toontastic is an app that supports the creation of animated cartoons. Through play, children are able to draw and animate their stories and then share those stories. The app comes with backgrounds and characters and children can also draw their own characters. I especially like the possibility of oral language development (especially when children are working in partnership with one another) as children create their story and how story structure can be learned through play.
StoryRobe is a storytelling app that allows you to use images, film, and audio to tell a story. It is very simple to use. I like the idea of using StoryRobe as a way for students to more authentically retell stories or to illustrate processes. Both can be done well.
Voice Thread: The Voice Thread app allows students to import images, record their voice, and share and allows others to respond.
3. Sight Words Sight Words 1 - 300: Kids Learn by Teacher Created Materials allows children to hear the words, practice writing the words, record the words with playback, and use the words in activities such as sentence building. The games are designed to build automaticity (i.e., tic-tac-toe). The first twenty-five words (typical of kindergarten) is sold for free.
4. Fluency
Echo reading:Having students listen to an interactive text on an iPad and 'echo' read each section of text (preferably what is on one page). This technique can help children to build fluency, accuracy, and expression.
Repeated reading (Samuels, 1979) of a prepared short text can help children to build fluency by matching their voice as they read and reread. Directing children to record their reading using the Voice Memos app or any other recording app you have also is beneficial and allows you an opportunity to hear how their reading changes. I also like to record a reading of the text for students to hear who would benefit from matching their voice to a reader's with directions to lower the volume each time they reread so that by the fourth rereading they are only hearing their own voice. Using seen text at the learning station can help to insure that the reader knows all of the words and isn't practicing errors.
4. Comprehension
ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard App
Using the ShowMe app, a teacher can prepare a how-to lesson or directions/prompts that students can view and interact with during a center time. As students become familiar with the ShowMe app, students can use this app to make their own explanation video. I made this ShowMe as an example of how I might prompt students to use the 3, 2, 1 strategy while reading informational text. It took me a minute to make.
It catches me by surprise when my son tells me that the age range on his Minecraft server is 7 to 73. Eight decades. Wow, what a range of experience, a collection of perspectives, a sounding of life stories.
As a mom, I have an ear to that server and am marveling at what I am coming to understand: connected play allows for the development of ideas--'people collisions' so to speak--that have the potential to generate new ideas, open perspectives, allow for reconsideration. These collisions are inherently nomadic: just where individual ideas begin to morph into new epiphanies is difficult to trace--if at all. Now for sure, there have always been groups and ideas that have rubbed up against one another--neighborly interactions. What's different in this connected world of affinity spaces is the juxtaposition of people who previously would not have had the occasion to notice one another, let alone form important relationships. On my son's server there is:
A 73-year-old Minecraft player from Canada.
A Sultan, a 20-something Saudi prince.
A 9-year old beginning coder from Pennsylvania.
A 'with it' girl coder from just outside London.
A veritable ABCs of teens and more teens from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, France...Russia...US and so on...
A teacher from Jersey.
Oh to be fly on that wall when this group starts chatting. Who can begin to name the possibilities that open as these players mix, collide? When I think about all those collisions, I get hopeful and I think maybe, just maybe King's dream might become reality.
II.
The first time I recall seeing my dad cry was the day Dr. King was murdered. I was a child then and the image of my 6' 2" father bowed by sadness remains decades later. Dr. King had a dream that we still might get right. He said:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by
the content of their character.
Might our children become less influenced by racism as they interact with others from around the globe and from across geographic areas that are separated by income, gender, belief? Might they code difference differently when they experience others on a daily basis? Might affinity spaces, such as a Minecraft server, produce occasions for becoming (other)wise?
III.
We're in the car--the site of so much conversation--when my son tells me that he has changed the economic system he is using on his server from capitalism to communism. I am uncertain as to what he means by this but do listen as he tells me that capitalism is so yesterday and it just seems to work out so much better when people have what they need.
Who decides what is needed? I ask.
You only have to say. It's smoother that way, he says.
You only have to say. Hmm.
IV.
How different is our perspective when the world is understood as being abundant, enough? Might thinking make it so?
Note: These are notes and activities for a presentation I will be doing this week with administrators as part of a continuing series of work related to Instructional Rounds.
1. Naming
Watch the video and notice what the students do and don't do.
Discuss with your group the examples of disengagement that you find.
Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a
feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process
of the activity.
Characteristics:
Very Focused
Very Clear Goal: Not too difficult or too easy.
Balance of Skills and Challenge
Immediate Feedback to their Action
In the present
Flow is the reward
3. Applying
Elementary Kids Monitor Terrain with Technology
1. View Video
2. Code Transcript
Using characteristics we named that suggest student engagement, code the transcript from the video.
