6 Step Process to Build Self-Confidence for Students Who Failed the First Half of the School Year

Today, school resumed after the winter break.  Some students will be enthusiastic about the return due to doing well academically while others fear a repetition of a poor academic performance in the second half of the school year.  Since the successful ones will probably continue to be so in their classes, they will not need the teacher's attention as much as the strugglers.  It is this second group that this blog is dedicated to:)

How can teachers motivate students who may have given up on succeeding in school?  Though there are many resources out there to offer ideas on this topic, I have selected the one that seems to be the easiest to implement for any teacher.  The techniques addressed here are those that I have used for years and I can guarantee that they do work with some patience on the teacher's part.  After all, because the changing of instructional approaches is occurring in the middle of the school year, teachers must have students change old habits.  This may make the weaker ones a bit uncomfortable, but it IS for their own good.

To boost student self-confidence, they have to believe that changes will lead to a passing grade (or higher).   There are several avenues teachers may pursue to that end.  First, students have to receive specific feedback on what they are doing and how well they are doing it.  Simply saying "good job" does not tell the student what specifics s/he got right so that s/he will know what to repeat in the future.  Make the praise genuine.  This validation is very effective in improving student performance.

Differentiate the learning goals since not all students learn at the same speed.  Through slightly adjusting lessons based on student ability, teachers will see more active participation.  This leads to increased student engagement and that is a win-win for everyone.

Call on students randomly.  We sometimes tend to call on the students who have their hands in the air, but those are the students who already know the answers.  What about the silent "majority"?  Randomizer apps are available for all smart phones.  If technology is not available, use playing cards or sticks with names on them.  The results are the same--no one know who will be called on. This suspense leads to more student engagement in the class because they know that they will be held accountable for learning.

Be enthusiastic about teaching your subject.  Enthusiasm can be infectious:)  Try one-on-one conferences once a week with students.  The weaker ones may need two minutes.  All students truly seem to enjoy that special time to have all of the teacher's attention.  For teachers, it provides time to truly get to know the student.

Just some ideas to offer hope to students who are struggling:)

Have a great first day back with your students:) 

Denise
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Here Are 5 High School Students Who Succeeded Despite the System Rather Than Because of It.

With the end of every school year, many of us reflect on how effective the educational setup in place was overall.  Could the present system have done a better job at reaching the increasingly diverse needs of its many students?  What innovations in school structure could be implemented so that NO child would ever be left behind?  What options could be offered to meet the many unique learning styles or needs of every student?

Take a look at these  5 fascinating stories from high school students who might not have done well in school if their entire academic future rested entirely on standardized test scores and a 1940 factory style learning environment.  Teachers they felt a connection with enabled them to achieve success.  One has to wonder what the world of education would look like if teachers had more freedom to reach more students by allowing them to experience true learning in formats that were individually tailored to support them in realizing their own dreams. 

Denise

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Academic Language Tools for All Grade Levels

How can teachers address the many academic language needs of students in reading, writing, speaking, and listening within every day lessons?  How can language development along with the teaching of content be skillfully woven into every lesson without losing sight of non-ELLs? 

Though it may seem at first to be an impossible feat, it isn't.  Using academic language tools, every class lesson has the potential to reach not only the English language learners but also all the other students including those with special needs.

The goal of the kit is to move students from informal speech (the language they use with their friends) to formal language ( the language which can only be acquired in school with the teacher).  The expansion of vocabulary is addressed as students move from tier 1 words to tier 2 (more sophisticated vocabulary), and occasionally to tier 3 (the highest).  As the base vocabulary becomes more richer or more academic, so do the writing and reading skills develop as well.  If teachers want their students to succeed in common core, they will need to scaffold and nurture growth in those areas is their students are to be successful beyond high school.

This kit includes questioning techniques teachers should use in moving students away from conversational language.  For example, students need to know how to pose questions in an academic setting or within an academic discussion.  Question and sentence frames are included in this kit along with classroom activities to promote their use in any classroom.  Activities like Think-Pair-Share, quick writes, cooperative learning (number heads together, jigsaw, etc.), prominently positioned question charts for easy reference, etc. make the process an enjoyable one for both students and teachers.

Summarizing, comparing/contrasting, sequencing/ordering, classifying, analyzing, inferring/predicting/hypothesizing, justifying, persuading, problem solving, synthesizing, evaluation, and cause and effect are all addressed here in this pdf along with suggestions for boosting vocabulary in all areas.

Here are some more graphic organizers:  thinking maps  and a free graphic organizer gold mine.


Denise

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"70 Ways to Keep Students Engaged" BY Teachers FOR Teachers:)

One of the keys to success in improving student academic performance at any grade level is active student engagement within a lesson.  Straight lecture is not enough. Such an approach accompanied by calling on those few volunteers who always know the answer leads to restlessness or nodding off on the part of the majority of the class.  After all, if teachers expect students to retain content knowledge, they must employ different approaches to assist the students in retaining information.  Further ELLs and those with special needs must have multiple opportunities to process new information.  Simple handouts or assignments from the text are not enough since many of these handouts are usually created by the publisher with little in the way of accommodations for students with special needs.

So what are some suggestions for motivating all students and enjoying the process along the way?  The collection listed in this post  offers 70 creative academic activities which can be applied to any subject area and at any grade level.  They are all imaginative forms of checking-for-understanding which touch on all learning styles and have the potential to weave in multiple intelligences in the process.  What imaginations we teachers possess:)

Denise

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EXIT SLIPS--Excellent Tool for Quick Assessments

All too often, teachers spend hours designing quality lessons that they believe will lead to a wonderful learning experience for all students in their classes.  However, with more classrooms becoming increasingly diverse in student needs, teachers sometimes feel overwhelmed in planning for every possible scenario--English language learners at all levels of learning the language, students with special learning needs, native speakers of English with weak educational backgrounds, students from economically disadvantaged home settings, etc. 

So within such a setting, what can teachers do to ensure that the vast majority of students master the major concepts of the lesson?  In two words:  EXIT SLIPS.  This tool provides quick assessments of how well each student understood the lesson.   Since they are ungraded, students do not stress over them.  When teachers explain that this tool will help identify students who struggle so that the teacher can devise additional instructional tools to help them, students welcome them.  After all, if they do well, their self-confidence soars.  If they don't do well, they know that the teacher will help them grasp the lesson. 

Here are some video clips on teachers using these tools to guide their instruction. The first one is on the use of exit slips in a high school math classroom.  The second one demonstrates their use in a 3rd grade classroom.

Remember that exit slips are good for all grade levels and in all content areas.  Use them and watch student academic performance improve dramatically!

Denise

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Solid Strategies to Support Students in Tackling Informational Text:)

One of the many goals of common core based lessons is to support, guide, scaffold students in developing the necessary reading and writing skills that will be demanded of them to succeed in college and/or the business world.  This process will start out in Kindergarten and continue through the 12th grade.  As students move up in grade levels, assigned tasks will cover more challenging tasks which will in turn pose more in-depth academic reading challenges.  Teachers will therefore need a wide variety of approaches to ensure that every student has multiple opportunities to reach that level of proficiency in those skills, and such mastery translates into quality life choices:) 

STRATEGIES TO TEACH STUDENTS HOW TO ANALYZE INFORMATIONAL TEXT--offers a list of reading strategies that are very effective in building reading analysis skills.  Only the first two items are hyperlinks.   The others offer short 1 or 2 sentence descriptions.  For more information on any one of them, just copy and paste the term in Google's search bar.

TEACHING INFORMATIONAL TEXT TO ELLS  Colorin Colorado offers a wide variety of approaches to teach ELLs how to survive common core based reading of informational texts lessons.  Many of their suggestions also work with English speaking students as well.

PLAN TO TEACH INFORMATIONAL TEXT TO MIDDLE SCHOOL VIA PREZI
Using PREZI, a detailed overview of how to teach a lesson on bullying is presented.  Again, students work with informational text to address the topic.  This layout offers a good general overview of how a common core tech based lesson might appear in a classroom.

Please feel free to share your successes with common core.  I will share teacher contributions with all via this blog:)

Denise

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KNOWING STUDENT LEARNING STYLES LEADS TO BETTER STUDENT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN CLASS

English language learners are people first and ELLs second.   Each ELL has a unique learning style which, when validated by the teacher and therefore incorporated into the lesson, enables her/him to understand what is being taught.  In addition, each teacher has her/his own preferred learning style which can easily dominate instructional delivery unless the teacher makes a conscious effort to build instructional activities aimed at all of the learning styles into every aspect of a given lesson/activity.

So, how can teachers meet the needs of all students in class?    This video describes each of the learning styles--LEARNING STYLES  . In this article  a teacher can find her/his preferred learning style(s)-- FIND YOUR STYLE   Here, teachers see that there maybe a mismatch of teaching style vs. learning style which could lead to misconception of an ELL's abilities-- "THEY'RE NOT DUMB, THEY'RE DIFFERENT." 

With such diverse needs all within 4 walls, teachers need to develop instructional tool kits which will meet the needs of all without watering down curriculum or leaving any behind.  The next two sites offer some practical and easy to implement approaches to address this.   Great sources to bookmark or hold as favorites.

INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS AND LEARNING STYLES

(UK)  LEARNING STYLES AND TEACHING


Denise

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TWITTER--A SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL WITH A LOT OF POTENTIAL WITH STUDENTS IN THE CLASSROOM

Nowadays, kids of all ages have cell phones and spend a great deal of time on them using social media:  twitter, facebook, texting, instant messaging, wikis, iphoto, youtube, etc.  However, when they come to school, teachers spend a good deal of time reminding students to put their phones away or set them on vibrate.

Cell phones are called smart phones for a reason--they are basically pocket sized computers!  If school districts would promote a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy, every student would have access to the internet and all the forms of social media that come with it.

In this post, the key focus will be on TWITTER.  Why TWITTER?  For English language learners especially, the limit of 140 characters is not intimidating.  Further, shy students will probably feel more comfortable sharing their ideas since no talking is involved.  Every student can participate with ease and the teacher (as well as the entire class) can watch the twitter feed on the screen.  What a great way to excite students about sharing their opinions with the world!

See what students think in these two videos.

TWITTER IN HIGH SCHOOL
Here students share how much more involved they feel in their learning now.  Students are actively engaged in their non-elective courses taking full advantage of tech tools.  One item not mentioned is that assignments could also be saved on DROPBOX or in GOOGLE DOCS where they will be safe until the user deletes them.

 KQED "DO NOW" AND BURTON HIGH SCHOOL
Here, KQED (San Francisco, CA) created "Do Now" activities for teachers to use at the start of class.  Students pulled out their cell phones to respond (tweet) to the topic of the day.  A world audience is involved when a person sends out tweets.  Students were amazed that people around the world were sharing ideas with them.  

If using twitter is a problem at your site, offer to pilot using it for a semester, keep records of the student involvement, note increases in grades, and annotate student change in attitude about being in school.  Share with administration and hope for the best:)

Denise

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EDMODO--THIS TOOL BRINGS SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR TEACHER AND STUDENT INTO THE CLASSROOM FOR FREE!

Do your students like facebook?  Do you?  If your answer is yes to either of these, you will want to bring EDMODO into your classroom. 

Joining is free.  Once the teacher establishes an account, s/he gives the students an enrollment key to join the teacher's class.  No one can enter the class without that enrollment key.  Teachers follow the same procedure for every class they have.  Again, the enrollment keys provided to the students are good for only ONE class.

Now, just like facebook, teachers can upload video, assignments, announcements, pictures, power points, articles, weblinks, etc.  There is also a GRADEBOOK!  What material is uploaded to the site?  That is left up to the teacher.  Parents will truly enjoy seeing class activities via this link.  In fact in many schools, teachers supply parents with sign-in information for their children.  What an incredible showcase of student achievement to impress parents with!  This link offers a far more detailed breakdown of what the site may be used for:  MORE DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF ADVANTAGES OF USING EDMODO

In this YOUTUBE video, a quick easy-to-follow overview is offered.  For teachers who are unsure about whether or not this program would work for them, they will find some reassurance here.  WHAT IS EDMODO? 

Here a teacher walks through the many features of the site.  The explanations are clear and support the information provided in the earlier links.  EDMODO TOUR AND MORE
How does a teacher become fully familiar with all the rich features of EDMODO?  Play with it:)  Talk to other teachers who tend to live on facebook.  Maybe your students can support you here!

Over 8,000,000 educators and their students are on EDMODO.  What are you waiting for? Enjoy:)

Denise

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Google Tools For Educators--Bring 21st Century Technology Into Your Classroom For FREE!

This giant in technology has a seemingly infinite amount of resources for teachers so it is often no surprise that many teachers do not have enough time in their daily schedule to take advantage of many of the materials the site offers. 

Taking a "less is more approach," I have pulled out just one section dedicated to teachers and their students. 

One favorite is the teacher-generated custom search engine.  With this tool, the teacher selects the sites to be used in the index.  Searching only the sites you specify, your students bypass all the junk.  This takes time to develop, but it is well worth the effort since your students will be directed to approved sites with a lot less wasted time.  Think about how much such a tool would support an ELL in doing research in English in a content area subject.  Now, every site the student finds would be a legitimate one.

Google Earth is a geography teacher's dream come true.  With this tool, students are "transported" from their chairs to ANY point on earth with a few clicks of the keys.  Going to Egypt?  Care to see the Giza Pyramid?  Google earth will take them right to the spot.  Students can study the area from all angles just as a tourist would.  How about taking students back in time to London as it looked in 1580 A.D.?  You can do that here.  Google SKY is another feature.  With this, you can go planet hopping.  Mars is the most visited planet of late (Mars Curiosity).  Have students "walk" on other worlds. 

iGoogle allows teachers (and students) to gather great content in any subject area from all over the internet and store it in one place.  This type of customization personalizes internet content.  This is definite motivator for students to read more since they are collecting data of interest to them:)

Google Docs
Here students will have access to an online word processing program, power point editor, and a spreadsheet program for free.  They may work alone or collaboratively where each contributor/editor has a different color so that the original writer can keep track of who is involved in the revision process.  The best feature of all though is that everything is saved on an external server so that any of the writers can access the material from ANY computer ANYWHERE thanks to cloud computing.

GOOGLE FOR EDUCATORS APPS  Read more on all the goodies that Google has for teachers.   Explore them.  Play with them.   The more comfortable or confident a teacher feels with the tool, the more likely a teacher will use it in class:)

If you are still on vacation, try it out and have some fun with it.  Your students will love it I guarantee it!

Denise

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GOOGLE TOOLS FOR THE CLASSROOM

Project Based Learning-Integral Part of Common Core Standards!

With ELLs soon to be fully integrated into mainstream content classes, teachers will be searching for creative productive strategies to engage all students in ways that not only provide access to all for content, but also develop English language skills for ELLs. 

So how is a teacher to meet demanding needs on the part of the students?   Often times, cooperative learning has been one vehicle to do this.  In cooperative learning, small teams of learners work together to complete a task with each child being held accountable for the responsibilities of that role.  For example, the "recorder" would keep a record of all key notes generated by the group in doing their assignment.  For ELLs, this is a non-threatening learning environment.  Teachers facilitate in the instruction to clarify points or concepts as needed.  (For more on cooperative learning, see TOP TEN posts of all time in the blog). 

With common core standards, teachers will be challenging students to do more independently.  Cooperative learning activities can start students off in the instruction cycle, but project based learning inspires students of all ages to do more and enjoy the process along the way.  In PBL teams, students solve problems of interest to them.  Think about second graders working on the pros and cons of the stock market, high school students designing a high school of 2050, some students design their own projects on topics that interest them, etc.

In PBL settings, ELLs would need support with the academic language and project goals.  Word walls or concept maps (for WORD WALLS and CONCEPT MAPS search within this blog for posts on them both) could be designed by students so that anyone who needed a quick review of the concept could just go up to the wall and find the answer needed.  ELLs would also need the academic language structure to talk to their peers.  Academic sentence frames could help (even EOs would benefit from them).  In solving the problem students decide to address, the ELL would be actively involved in sharing his/her thoughts with scaffolding devices such as graphic organizers, sentence starters, visuals, notes, etc.  As with cooperative learning, the teacher would facilitate as needed as well as monitor ELL progress in language. PROJECT BASED LEARNING

PBL will prepare students to enter the 21st century work force.  The global community needs team players to solve world problems.  Our ELLs might even have an advantage here in that they will be proficient in more than one language:)

Denise
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Coaching Tools to Support Teachers of ELLs in Mainstream:)

With the changing demographics in the typical American classroom, more teachers are receiving ELLs in their classrooms in greater numbers.  For many teachers, this change is one where they really would like to receive peer support from colleagues quite adept at meeting the needs of ELLs in language development and access to grade level core content. 

To assist teachers in this area, many schools have recruited veteran teachers with several years of proven success in meeting the needs of these students.  This small cadre of teachers offers peer support. They are not administrators.  Everything they see or are told is kept in strict confidence.  After all, if a teacher thinks for even one second that anything the coach sees will be shared with  administration, the teacher will refuse to have the coach in his/her room.  When confidentiality is respected, the openness allows the teacher to develop and try new techniques in a safe risk-free environment.  The teacher and coach can plan lessons together, co-teach, enter coaching cycles, etc.  Coaches can even model teaching in the teacher's room. 

For coaching cycles to be successful, an element of trust must be present between the coach and the coached.  Coaches are trained to listen and allow teachers to clarify what they are looking to improve on.  If the coach makes the suggestions, s/he is not helping the teacher.  Coaches need to come with open minds and take careful notes at meetings (be sure to give the notes back to the teacher after the activity is done--this ensures confidentiality).  Find supplies, make copies, secure videos, etc. to share with the teacher to enable s/he to try new strategies that s/he has designed.  When the lesson is over, the coach needs to hear from the teacher first as to how s/he thought the lesson/activity went.  The vast majority of times, teachers generally have a fairly good idea of how effective the lesson/activity and where they fell short in delivery.  In fact, most coaches report hearing more ideas for improvement than the coaches came prepared to share!


INSTRUCTIONAL COACHING TOOLS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS  will provide you with all of the basic tools you would need to use as a coach or just a concerned peer.  Share them with anyone who is looking to support a colleague going through a rough time. 

Denise


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ACCESS THE NYC Public Library Digital Picture Collection ONLINE for FREE!

No matter what subject you teach, you generally need visual supports to help students access the main point of your lesson. Sometimes a textbook may have good materials, but often times it may fall a bit short in presenting a full picture of a concept or event. This leads teachers to trying to locate other sources to help clarify for students the concepts being taught.

To ease the work load in this area, check out NYC Public Library Digital Picture Collection. This is a photograph collection spanning hundreds of years and topics. To use the site, go to the long white slim rectangular box in the middle of the page. Click on drop down menu and then select the area of interest. You can save the images on your laptop unless your district blocks it. It is possible to print them out to use with a document camera. A last option is to save the links in a bookmark or favorite folder to pull from as needed.

These powerful images can be used by students too in creating reports, powerpoints, etc. In fact, if you have ELLs, you could pass out 1 photo to small groups of 2 or 4. Provide the students with some reflection questions. Allow them 5-7 minutes to discuss what the photo reveals to them without any writing. Once the small group discussions are completed, you can add to the vocabulary and content material by conducting a whole group discussion and charting the key points (and vocabulary) generated by the class. This approach fully equips the ELL to then take this knowledge and apply it to more demanding activities such as navigating key parts of the textbook or writing about the subject. MIND MAPS will help here (see MIND MAPS post for details). The more support you provide the ELL with in class, the more success the ELL will experience in doing any assignments based on the lesson you delivered.

Enjoy!

Denise

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Proven Successful Teaching Strategies to Reach Your ELLs!

How would you like to have at your fingertips detailed successful teaching strategies with ELLs accompanied by FREE videos of those strategies in action? Wonder no more! Here is the site: WELCOME TO ELL BEST PRACTICES

Here you will examples of proven approaches for both elementary and secondary students. Would you like to cooperative learning at its best? Would you like to see how graphic organizers help ELLs organize their data and therefore take more accurate notes in class? How about the importance of setting clear objectives and providing clear feedback? CLICK HERE You are free to also share the videos through email.

Further, along with these excellent teaching videos, you can also access written descriptions of the strategies. The details are succinctly laid out (i.e. bullet format). Many times the video is linked to the resource to make it easier for the teacher to tie the two together. The topics also come with graphic organizers and other teaching tools used in the videos.

If your administrators are looking for resources in this area, you may pass the following link on to them: ADMINISTRATORS. It covers legal requirements, the differences between ELD and SDAIE, suggestions for observing teachers, and much more.

I hope you enjoy this site. I was impressed with the quality of instruction present and the active involvement of the students:)

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS

"MY TEST BOOK"-The Answer to a Teacher's Dream!

How would you like to be able to create and store some of the exams you have developed for your students online? How would you like to be able to share your exams with other teachers (and they with you)? What would it be like to have a test ready to go with ease for a student who was absent? How do you feel about creating classes where you can not only assign tests (in ANY subject) but also issue report cards any time you wish so that students (and parents) can receive regular updates on student progress?

Such a site may sound too good to be true for a free site (donations encouraged, but not required), but it does exist and is available for student (teacher creates the student accounts along with virtual classrooms), parent, and teacher. The site is MY TEST BOOK . Register for FREE and start exploring. Some grades and subjects have exams that other teachers have submitted (and you are free to do so as well), but not every grade and subject area has assignments yet. When you start creating work for your classes there, think about sharing it with other teachers and start to build a valuable collections for fellow teachers around the world!

I studied the site for a bit by approaching it from student, parent, and teacher options. It was easy to navigate. Further I found that I could download already prepared worksheets and tests as well as set up my own. I noted that you may also share your work with other teachers if you chose to do so.

How does such a site assist ELLs (ESL students) and others?

1. They may have more than one opportunity to take a test on a given topic. Sometimes, students need to revisit a test due to language issues or limited knowledge of the content. Students could also take "practice" tests to build self-confidence.

2. They receive immediate feedback on their test results. With such feedback, students can discuss with the teacher the areas where they encounter some confusion BEFORE they take the major assessment.

3. Students can get regular progress reports. If the scores keep improving, self-esteem skyrockets. Of course, this will make parents beam with pride.

Take a tour of the site and see if it meets your needs:)

Denise

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