Nonfiction!

I know it is the middle of summer, but I finally had time to reflect on and write about one of my favorite units in both reading and writing: nonfiction! I’ve tried out many different kinds of nonfiction units over the years and while I still love our Biographical Essays: Researching People Who Inspire Us unit, I have enjoyed the students’ enthusiasm and engagement in all of them. 

Nonfiction literacy is so important. It ties into media literacy and understanding and learning about the world around you, is a life skill (you will always need to understand and explain information!). There are so many facets to it between learning about facts vs opinion, critical literacy, synthesizing information, and more. But most of all, it is fascinating and FUN.

Some essential elements: you MUST have great mentor texts (we had a lot of success with Pink is for Blobfish by Jess Keating, fun and unexpected biographies, and were amused and enthralled by the Disgusting Critters series by Elise Gravel). I should (and hopefully will) write a separate post about choosing resources critically, but in the meantime, just a reminder to consider perspective/voice/stereotypes/bias especially when thinking about biographies or informational texts that talk about the past. It’s key to show students that there is variety in types of nonfiction as too many people write off nonfiction because they’ve only been exposed to textbooks or “boring” books. Remember research is a fascinating challenge! You can use many different types of materials (people, books, articles, photos, videos, other graphics like maps) to discover more about something. We wrote a post about Learning Through Photos and another post about how we used photographs as primary sources in our Black History Lesson: Sit Ins.

While we love essays and the painted essay especially (as detailed in this post that’s also linked above), there are many ways to share nonfiction and talking about cool facts is the first one! Let students talk about what they learn. Research or reading nonfiction does not have to be silent independent work. Finding our more should be joyful, collaborative learning with lots of opportunities to share. We once wrote books in groups about different countries in Africa, and students were so excited to share what they learned with other groups and pool their research together within their group. They also used a lot of resources that were not books or written texts, like videos, photos, maps, and people (whom they interviewed).

Also, don’t insist that everything needs to be shared in a written format. Nonfiction books use all kinds of graphics and sometimes they are more effective than explaining something in words. We allowed our students to find a certain number of photos online and explicitly taught into what makes a good illustration or accompaniment to some text, using lots of mentor texts and examples of different kinds of graphics. Read our review of One Word From Sophia by Jim Averback to hear about a wonderful read aloud to introduce using different graphics.

What I’ve learned from teaching nonfiction over the years is that CHOICE is huge here. Students are already so knowledgeable about so many things, so let them use their expert status at school too! We had our students write all about books and our only caveat was that their topic had to be something they knew a lot about and that was appropriate for school. They are excited to share what they know about something they care about, we all get a reminder about how reading and writing are fundamentally communication tools above all else, and we (teachers) get to be amused by all the hilarious and creative topics, details, and facts students generate.

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Ideas for Black History Month and Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action

Happy snow day all! Not teaching today means I have time to reflect on and write about some activities we tried out this month related to the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action (which we also participated in last year), and Black History Month.

While it happens that our biographical essays unit (which ties in with our non-fiction reading unit) falls during this month, we of course try to teach with an anti-bias framework every day (and all day!). Our curriculum, language, literature, and so much more should reflect the diversity of our world (as we the teachers do!) and we work hard to make this a reality everyday. So we are very purposeful about what we teach during Black History Month/Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action in hopes of avoiding the pitfall of teaching Black history only one month out of the year.

This month, we used a number of wonderful read alouds to enlighten our third graders. On February 1st, we joined millions of educators and participated in the National African American Read-In with a read aloud of Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson. This book connected with so many things we were learning about including our year long study of geography, biographies, and of course, Black History and the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action. We also read a Newsela article about Jacqueline Woodson being named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Finally, we read Each Kindness and continued working on thinking about author’s purpose by asking ourselves a series of questions leading up to conceptualizing why the author chose to write this book and what the author might want us to learn.

Student responses to Granddaddy’s Turn

Another powerful read aloud was Granddaddy's Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box by Michael S Bandy, Eric Stein, and illustrated by James E. Ransome (pictured above). We read this book right after we read a Newsela article about poll taxes and present day voter ID laws. Students made the connection right away and had so many questions about literacy tests at the polls, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and more.

My students were also enthralled when we read Libba by Laura Veirs, illustrated by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh as part of our biography study. They loved seeing and hearing about the statue of her and had so many questions about playing the guitar upside down! They are often amazed that they haven’t heard of someone who is so talented and this feeling leads into discussions about whose stories are highlighted (or omitted) in our homes, schools, and in the media.

This post would not be complete without including Milo’s Museum by Zetta Elliott. Third graders usually know and can describe what being excluded feels like, so they relate to Milo even though she is reflecting on institutional exclusion. There is so much to love about this book and we used our framework for inferring author’s purpose to think about how it feels to be excluded and what you might want others to learn from hearing your story about it.

February (and the school year) is not over yet, and of course there are always more wonderful books to share and enjoy! Please share activities or ideas that worked well in your classroom - book recommendations especially are always welcome.

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Activities to Help Start the School Year Off Right

I know many teachers have already had their first day (or week) of school and I’m sure you had lots of wonderful activities, read alouds, get to know yous, and interactions planned. I am planning for my first day of school next week and reflecting on some of the activities I’ve used in the past that I know I want to use again. Here are some of my favorites:

Name related activities: Name activities are the best. They provide an opportunity for you to learn about your students and ask them how they would like to be addressed in class. They also create a chance for you to share something about yourself while learning about students’ identities. Here are some of my favorites:

• Create your Name: this activity was inspired by SEED. Have your students create their name in a way that feels good to them, using whatever materials you have on hand. Then, take students’ photos holding their “name masterpieces” and get students’ photos up in your classroom or school!

• Name Stories: these are always fascinating, validating, and so much fun! I always introduce name stories with a read aloud (see name related read aloud ideas below), and then give students prompts to interview each other and ask about the story of their name. Students can share as much as they like or choose to focus on one aspect of their name that feels good to them.

• What’s Your Name Worth? This is a great Math activity that helped me start the year by seeing how my 3rd grade mathematicians approached a puzzle. For 3rd graders, we gave them a chart showing all of the letters in the alphabet and a corresponding value in cents (for example, a is worth one cent, b is worth 2 cents, etc), but you can create your own chart with negative and positive values, Math problems, or really whatever works for you and your students. Once students found the value of their name, they could choose a teacher’s or family member’s name and then had to try and find names worth exactly twenty five cents or a dollar.

• Name related read alouds (for the chapter books, you can read an excerpt of the relevant part): A House on Mango Street, Brown Girl Dreaming, Thundercloud Jr., The Name Jar, The Favorite Daughter, My Name is Yoon, My Name is Maria Isabel - and there are so many more!

Once you’ve learned everyone’s names and what they would like to be called, here are some other first week(s) of school activities that build community, rapport, engagement, and help you best support your students.

• Start a read aloud: We start a chapter book on the first day of school and it engages students in a shared reading experience from the very beginning of our time together. We read Save Me a Seat for our first read aloud last year and it was a perfect back to school book that fit into so many of the things we talked about (our needs as learners, our classroom contract, goal setting, appropriate challenge, and more)

• I Wish My Teachers Knew: give your students the opportunity to share their thoughts and concerns with you.

• Numbers Important to Me: we use this activity to introduce our Math binders. The cover of your Math binder is your “Numbers Important to Me” page. Students choose a paper color and then write (and decorate) numbers and why they are important to them. For example, “5 - because I have 5 people in my family.” Make sure you make an example so your students can learn about you as well.

• Top Ten Lists: read The Top Ten Ways to Ruin the First Day of School for inspiration and then make a “Top Ten Things to Know About [insert your name]” list. Again, make an example to share!

• Letter to Yourself: this can be a wonderful first day or week homework assignment (for older students) or an in class activity. Have students write letters to themselves making predictions about the school year. Seal them in individual envelopes, put them away, and then give to them on the last day of school. This can also be a great tool for goal setting!

• Hopes & Dreams: set hopes and dreams for this school year. I always model with one of my own and try to have one that is social emotional focused and one that is about learning or trying something new. Then, use your students’ hopes and dreams to move into creating classroom rules and goal setting (more ideas and details are available from Responsive Classroom).

Happy Teachers' New Year everyone!

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NPS Diversity Institute!

Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the National Presbyterian School Diversity Institute featuring Rosetta Lee. I first encountered Rosetta when we were both presenting (about microaggressions) at the Asian Educators Alliance in 2016, and have been a big fan ever since! I also loved attending a local conference and meeting many early childhood educators who also work in the DC Metro area.

There were so many things to love about this institute. I especially appreciated being able to attend a session for early childhood (PK-3rd) educators, as so many diversity or social justice workshops seem to be geared for middle school and up. There is nothing like being surrounded by early childhood social justice educators to make you feel vindicated for all the times you insisted that third graders (or even fifth graders) are most definitely NOT “too young for this work!”

I also was so grateful for flexible collaborative work time on the second day of the institute and the emphasis on teacher voices and practice. I often attend professional development opportunities and then struggle to find the time to apply what I learned to my own practice, but this institute gave us time and resources to do so by allowing us to work together on our own (or collaborative) projects, questions, or ideas.

Some things I am still thinking about:

• Rosetta’s explanation that we should talk about cultural competency as the ability to do your best work with people who are not you and how it has to start with your own cultural self awareness. I will absolutely use this with families and love how clear, simple, logical, and true it is!

• Jones Model of Cultural Competence: you will never “get there” because it is iterative! The question you should ask yourself is not “are you there yet?” but “are you moving?”

• 6 month olds demonstrate an awareness of race - it is developmentally appropriate to talk about race with young students and sharing counter messages to stereotypes is actually essential before they learn bias from the world around them.

• How wonderfully practical prompts, advice, and tips from the day were. I especially loved the discussion about how to partner with and support families as there were many concrete examples (also from the audience of educators!).

• This incredibly helpful Inclusive Classroom Practices resource Rosetta shared. I hope to use it all this year and ask questions like:

  • Are these in place in my classroom? In my school?

  • Are they in place for students and teachers?

  • What about non-teaching staff?

  • What (relatively) immediate changes can I make in my classroom to be more inclusive?

  • How can I counter my own biases?

I also had a wonderful discussion about thematic Social Studies and how instead of memorizing facts or studying ancient civilizations without any connection to today, we should look for the why in history and think critically about the world around us. I loved brainstorming with other teachers about why is Social Studies so tricky?! I especially appreciated this reminder as I am working on fine tuning our Geography curriculum this summer (and remembering it will always continue to change harkening back to the “are you moving?” question!).

Two last reminders of amazing resources (I hope you are already familiar with them, as I was, but it never hurts to remember how useful and important they are): Teaching Tolerance Anti Bias standards and GLSEN Resources for Educators.

Please comment below with any other resources you use to help you keep moving as an anti-bias educator  - we'd love to hear from you!

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Setting Students Up for Summer Reading

It’s so close to the end of the year (and summer!) that we have started getting questions about summer work and summer reading. We absolutely want to encourage students to read over the summer in order to maintain their good reading habits (which are important life skills) and avoid the dreaded summer slide. In our class (and at our school), we’ve found our students tend to have consistent access to books and reading options all summer, so for the population we work with, the most important way to encourage summer reading is to promote reading all year long!

All year, we have read alouds in our 3rd grade class. While we know this takes up a lot of instructional time, we have found that reading chapter books out loud to our 3rd graders has improved their comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, and engagement as readers (and more!). They have developed (or maintained) an incredibly high level of appreciation for wonderful books, reading, read alouds, authors, sequels, new vocabulary, cliffhangers, and more!

Apart from read alouds, we also encourage solid independent reading habits. We gave up on reading logs early this year as they felt like a drag and a chore and instead added a section on homework grids (they receive a new one every week with homework choices that are due Friday) that says, “What is one book you enjoyed this week?” Some students write as many as three or four books they enjoyed that week, and some add comments about the books too! We also have students share out periodically about books they are enjoying and encourage them to recommend books to each other. This genuine sharing of books and authentic pleasure in reading is gold.

Another amazing tool to prep students to be readers all summer long (and beyond) are book clubs! We are just wrapping up a book clubs unit that has been so powerful. Again, talking to each other about books you enjoy is a life skill and a genuine, authentic way to communicate about books. We also tried to tap into books that were the first in a series so some of our more reluctant readers would be really into the first book because they read it with their book club, and now have many more books with the same beloved characters to read all summer.

Finally, (and we can’t emphasize this enough), encourage library use! We are so lucky to be in DC where we have an amazing public library system that runs a phenomenal summer reading program for kids. However, just reminding students that libraries exist is important. For all of our research projects this year, we’ve brought in books from the DC public library (and reminded our students to take extra good care of them since they are “our personal library books.”) Modeling library use (and of course, active reading as adults/teachers) can motivate students to use the public library themselves (and of course, provide them with books all summer). Librarians are our priceless and valuable partners in our quest to get kids reading. If your students may not have consistent access to books this summer, ask a librarian for help! Depending on your flexibility with taking students out of the building or inviting people in as guest speakers, there are multiple ways to set students up to be public library users.

A student's summer reading goals: "read as many books as possible!"

We don’t assign a list of required reading over the summer (and are fortunate to have this flexibility at our school), but we do have students set summer reading goals and create lists of books they might like to read over the summer (and we share our own). This “Summer Reading Bingo” from the Curriculum Corner looks fun. How does summer reading work in your classroom (or school or household)?  We’d love to hear more ideas!

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Using Simulations to Teach Perspective and Economics Published on the McGraw-Hill Education Blog!

In conjunction with the National Council for Social Studies Annual Conference, Nina's piece on teaching perspective and Economics through simulations was published here.  Please read and let us know what you think!

What continent do you think they are from? Drawing humans to reveal internalized bias

In the process of teaching (and learning) geography in our third grade classroom, we found that our students were very North America and Europe centric. While eight year olds are naturally egocentric, we wanted an activity to shift their perspectives and push them to realize that there are “real, important people” ALL OVER the world.

So we redesigned our beloved activity where we draw people to realize our internalized biases (that we wrote for 5th graders, but have used with adults as well) to make it more geography focused and 3rd grade appropriate. While we were focused on introducing inspiring (and unexpected) people from different continents, we also thought we might uncover some gender and racial biases along the way.

We have been learning about world geography starting with the seven continents and five oceans since the first week of school. We started with the continents and learning about the differences between a continent, country, state, and city in order to make sure that our students could be clear and accurate.

The Procedure

For this activity, we refreshed our memories by sharing some information about each continent as a whole group. Then, we had students work independently on what we called a puzzle. We gave them a handout with five descriptions of humans, a space to draw each human, and a line to write what continent they thought each human was from. We also gave them a bag of crayons to draw with. We’ve discovered that asking people to draw with crayons means they have to choose a color for their humans and often surprise themselves with the assumptions they make.

We read each description out loud and asked students to follow along on their paper. Then, we gave them two minutes to draw a person. We told them to draw “whomever you imagine in your head when you hear the description.” The descriptions lacked gender specific pronouns or any clues to age, race, or background. After they finished drawing, we told them to write an answer to the question, “What continent do you think this person is from?”

Some students happily drew whatever they imagined, including props, speech bubbles, and detailed accessories. Others were more hesitant and expressed concern about getting the answer wrong. In general, students found assigning a continent to a description of a person easier as they could copy down one of the seven continents so their choices were more concrete.

Revealing the Answers

In typical third grade fashion, some students were disappointed that they didn’t guess all of the continents correctly when we revealed the actual humans we had been describing at the end (and what continent and country they were from). But our students were also fascinated by hearing about new (and very inspiring) people, so they quickly moved on and realized that learning, thinking and understanding were far more important than getting “the right answer”. They also loved hearing what country each person was from.

We chose one person from Asia, Africa, South America, Europe, and Australia. Multiple students identified the person we described from Asia - Malala Yousafzai - from our description of her and wrote her name down next to their drawing of her. However, when we read our description of Sadiq Khan, which included the fact that he is a practicing Muslim, no one guessed that he was from Europe.

The person we described from South America was Michelle Bachelet (the current and first female president of Chile), which confused some of our students because we mentioned that she is the president of her country. One student asked how that was possible because there have only been boy presidents? We reminded her that this is true in the United States, but not in many other countries.

Students comparing responses and discussing their thinking process

Many students were surprised that the Nobel Peace Prize winning scientist who studied at three different universities (Wangari Maathai) was an African women. Many students also thought most of the people were from North America or Europe (except for the person who is actually from Europe). We had one female student who drew only women, and one male student who drew only men. Another student drew androgynous people because she said she couldn’t tell from the descriptions and she didn’t want to make assumptions.

Debrief and Reflections

After we revealed the identities of each person described and discussed our reactions, questions, and comments about each person, we asked students to complete one or more of the following prompts.

While doing this activity...

I was surprised by..

I felt..

I learned…

I used to think… , but now I’m thinking …

Students shared out at the end, and had thoughtful reflections (see quotes from students’ reflections below). We love that they are embracing studying geography in a humanizing way and challenging the assumptions or stereotypes that they may have learned from Western centric media in the past.

Student quotes:

“I thought I would be right, but all of my answers were wrong, but I realized it was okay and they didn't all have to be right.”

“I felt uncomfortable because I didn’t want to get it wrong or offend anyone, but then I realized [after our discussion] that we make assumptions about people whenever we meet someone new.”

“One thing I learned was some things that some people do different things and they are actually really important, but aren't always recognized because we learn mostly about North Americans.”

“I learned don't judge people by what they look like or by first impressions.”

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Book Review: Save Me a Seat

Our first chapter book read aloud this year was Save Me a Seat by Gita Varadarajan and Sarah Weeks. It’s an amazing book for so many reasons, and was the perfect first read aloud for our class. While we felt it allowed for natural segues into many of the beginning of the school year discussions and activities, it’s a perfect book for anytime of the year.

There are two narrators which leads to two vastly different perspectives (often on the same event). Our students reflected often on how two people can experience the same events very differently. This helped them brainstorm ways to be understanding and empathic. One of our students referenced part of the book as an explanation of how misunderstandings happen and why assumptions are dangerous.

One of the main characters, Ravi, is a new student (and recent immigrant). His experiences helped us talk about how we want people to feel in our classroom. Joe, the other main character, feels like a target at school, and before we brainstormed agreements (rules) for our class contract, we discussed what we can do to make sure no one has to feel like Joe did  in our community. Students also really identified with Ravi’s frustration when his name was mispronounced and talked seriously about the importance of using names carefully and respectfully. The other day, when a substitute teacher was in our class, the students took it upon themselves to carefully learn her name even after she said it was a hard name and they were welcome to call her Mrs. K instead.

Save Me a Seat also teaches students about the significance of an apology. Sometimes (for kids) it can feel like saying sorry is simply a stepping stone towards moving on or getting out of trouble. But in Save Me a Seat, Joe’s father writes him a moving and heartfelt letter accepting responsibility for how he made Joe feel (instead of saying I didn’t mean to or focusing only on his intent) and acknowledging that it is okay for men (and boys) to have feelings after all. Especially with third graders who can have difficulty genuinely connecting abstract concepts, reading and discussing this part of the book was such an important lesson in apologizing, accepting responsibility, and discounting messages of how you are “supposed to” feel, act, or behave (because of gender, coolness, or something else).

Our students also learned so much and wanted to learn so much from reading this book. They asked questions (and we investigated) about Bangalore, South Indian food, Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), and more. They repeatedly asked us to share the recipes found in the book and poured over the glossaries for each main character in the back. We (teachers) also loved that there was a glossary for each main character as opposed to only one for Ravi.

Including two glossaries makes them a tool for each character to be understood more fully instead of an indication of Ravi’s foreign state. It also made me (as an Indian-American), happy because it means that readers were less likely to ask me (or other South Asian people) to explain or translate words or references in the book. The South Indian food in the book was not portrayed as foreign or weird or (my personal pet peeve) something only “adventurous” people eat. It was simply food, just like the food Joe ate.

Save Me a Seat is also a great mentor text. We will keep coming back to it all year as an example of how to develop characters, use descriptive language, write dialogue and more. The fact that each chapter ends in a cliff hanger makes it an exceptional read aloud.

Our students were so enthralled with the book that we decided to have a mini-celebration at the end complete with South Indian food. We ordered idli and sambar from Pansaari, a local restaurant, and the students were so excited to eat one of Ravi’s favorite foods. We had talked about respecting other people’s likes and dislikes and the students were quick to point out that this applies to food as well. Even students who said they don’t like spicy food or who are very picky about what they eat for lunch were excited to try the idli, sambar, and coconut chutney. While they ate, we (teachers) read aloud and finished the book. We also talked about our favorite parts of the book and looked at different locations from the book on a map.

Since we finished our read aloud, six of our students have eagerly reread Save Me a Seat independently (which works well for their development of comprehension and decoding skills in third grade). Many other students have asked if they can have the book next. They also trust our recommendations so much more! We love all of the enthusiasm around reading (and incorporating food, geography, kindness, and more). We truly couldn’t recommend this book more highly!

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Using SPLC's 10 Ways to Fight Hate in the Classroom

My first day of school (with students present) is in a little over a week. My co-teacher and I are moving from 5th grade to 3rd grade, and although our students will be younger and more concrete, we will continue to talk about current events. We don’t have a choice. This work is too important to stop because it is scary, uncomfortable, or difficult.

You know your students and what will work best for them, but here are some ideas of how to adapt and use the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)’s 10 Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide in your classroom. The 10 steps below are from their guide’s new edition.

A few reminders: if you are afraid that something is “too scary,” stop and think about students (and their families) who are already scared before they come to school. If you are afraid to be “too political,” remember that teaching is a political act. Everything you say - or don’t say - sends a message to your students about who (and what) really matters. Choosing to ignore hate is prioritizing the comfort of certain students over the safety of others. Tell yourself (and others if necessary): I am doing my best to make sure all students in my classroom feel safe, heard, and valued.

1. Act

We have had students write poems and persuasive essays, draw pictures, create posters, and empower us to sign petitions on behalf of our class (they are too young to take online action on their own). Ask your students what children can do to help and develop a “ways to fight hate” guide for your school, other children, your community - even very young students can think about and take productive action.

2. Join Forces

Ask students how can we join forces with others to fight hate.

This can be done as a class, school, or individual. Students can call on groups they belong to (religious, community, extra-curricular) and join forces with family members. You can also ask local groups that responded to hate event to visit the school/your classroom and help brainstorm how we as a class can act.

3. Support the Victims

A close friend of mine who is also a teacher alerted me to the #DearYoungPerson campaign to “send words of love and encouragement to the youth of Charlottesville through postcards.” In the past, we have had our students make cards, write letters, and create art in support of others.

Again, ask your students - how can we support the victims of hate? They have better ideas than we ever will.

Important reminder here: while there are clear and unequivocal victims of hate, prejudice and discrimination are dehumanizing and hurt all of us. I explain dehumanizing to students as not recognizing someone as a human being or seeing someone as less than a person. They understand.

4. Speak Up

Teach your students critical literacy. Teach your students to be active and discerning consumers of the media. We teach nonfiction critical literacy and how to detect author’s bias. Important questions: whose voice is heard? Who is quoted or legitimized as an expert? Who is producing and publishing the article? How might their perspective be biased? We also analyze language use: which words are repeated? Which words are left out? And of course, if we find a trend we always ask ‘Why?’

Students are not too young to write to the media. Write letters to the editor. Write letters to politicians. Ask to publish something in your school newspaper or newsletter. Create a class podcast. Even very young students can write a class letter or book, create a video, make posters, or more.

5. Educate Yourself

Ask your students what they would still like to know. Encourage them to think about what they know, what they are confused about, what they have questions about, and what they want to learn more about. Learn new vocabulary and practice explaining it to others. As best you can, enjoy the discomfort! There are always incredible humans, events, and movements of resistance to learn about.

One tool we love using as part of this process is a silent conversation. You can use it as described in the linked post, or with quotes or definitions for students to respond to and communicate about.

6. Create An Alternative

Ask your students: how can we create an alternative? Having a photo from an event or moment on the board and having them respond to it with thoughts and questions is an engaging and more tangible way to get the conversation started.  Hold a unity rally or assembly for your school and invite community members and family members to attend. Organize an event with nearby schools.

Listen to your students. They will have ideas about how they want to counter hate. Asking them to brainstorm, plan, and organize is providing practice and opportunities to develop lifelong crucial skills.

7. Pressure Leaders

Ask students to brainstorm a list of leaders you can contact. Start with school leaders, and then continue on to community leaders. If students feel that their leaders acted appropriately, they can write them thank you letters and provide ideas for where to go next. Starting a relationship and opening communication will provide more opportunities for collaboration in the future.

8. Stay Engaged

Ask students: how can we stay engaged? How can we move out of our comfort zone? What networks (or what kinds of networks) can we reach out to or help create?

Starting a network (virtual or on paper or in person) with another school could be a good place to begin. But as always, ask your students and follow their lead.

9. Teach Acceptance

This is something schools and educators should try to do everyday. Don’t have a separate “social justice” or “diversity” day, lesson, class period, or assembly. Incorporate anti-bias education and social justice work into your instruction. Some resources are available below, but there are many more. Remember, other teachers are your best resources (apart from your students and their families). Communicate. Collaborate.

For teachers with less autonomy over their curriculum, critically examine the things you do control. Who is pictured on your walls? Whose voice is heard in your classroom? Whose books do you read? Who is depicted in those books? Even if you are required to use a certain textbook or specific literature, try and counteract biased narratives with quotes, images, video clips, and information.

10. Dig Deeper

We use various simulations to aid our students in confronting their own internal biases and internalized stereotypes. Our students are far more open to this work than most adults. Remember that identifying internalized biases and stereotypes is only the beginning. Next, you need to ask yourself: how did I internalize these messages? Where are they perpetuated and communicated?

Ask students: what do we need to learn about to help us counteract our own intolerance? They will have questions, ideas, and motivation to learn. Start with language in your school community. What hurtful, stereotypical, or dehumanizing words do we use? What else can we do to help our school community be more open and accepting of everyone? How can we practice “image replacement” in our classroom and community to counteract negative stereotypes about groups of people?

Children are much more flexible than adults. Keep their developmental levels in mind, of course, but remember that they can do this. By inviting them to share in finding actions and brainstorming ways to help, we empower them and show them that silence is not an option.

Resources

ILA’s Picks of #CharlottesvilleCurriculum Resources

Teaching for Change Social Justice booklists (helpful for younger students especially!)

Citizenship and Social Justice: Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism

Washington Post article summarizing best educator resources

ASCD Inservice: Resources for Addressing Racism and Hatred in the Classroom

Facing History: Facing Today Blog

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Owning the Process: A Tool for all Writers

Hi everyone, Gabby here. I'm excited to share this idea with you today. It is one of my favorite ideas and tool we have used so far this year. You may have also noticed (we are 110% sure you have) that writing is a process and writing can be hard!

We all have our moments where we slump into the doldrums and lows where we just do not know how to get out. I noticed this with myself when working on storytelling pieces.. Each time I started to take on a story, I found myself landing in the same slumps and moaning at very similar times in the process. My friends would laugh on the phone, "Gabby, this always happens to you.. Right about now!"  What helped me was recognizing that the lows came specifically during the brainstorming process (and deciding which idea to use!) and just that knowledge that this was a part of my process, gave me some perspective to work through it. And thus, the writing process map was born!

The task: have students create wacky wonderful depictions of their own personal writing processes. Sure, many schools use Writer's Workshop (we do) and have a set few steps for how the writing process works, ie: brainstorming, drafting, or publishing etc. However, even within this structure we all (surprise!) take it on and experience it in our own unique way.

We asked our students to show through drawings, arrows (there ended up being SO many arrows), and captions how the writing process goes for them. We set them up with examples from different teachers and with a few questions to consider :

• What are times am I usually flowing and/ or excited during the Writing process? How do I show that?

• What are times when I am stuck and/or frustrated… ? Make sure to show that in all its glory!

• What works for me when I get stuck in this spot or that spot or another spot… make sure to include that!

From these questions our students created features like:

• "failure walls!" that popped up during brainstorming (or for one more reluctant writer, throughout his whole map!)

• or "alert!" signs telling them to take it slow when they had to take on editing their punctuation.

• We also saw pep talks written all over the maps like, "At this part for drafting, don't worry about your spelling!" and "You usually get mad here-- get water and keep going!".

• Some students even created a full table complete with multiple steps for how to work through their grumpy moments.

• Needless to say, every single map is different, even though on a larger level we go through a similar process as a class for Writing. We were blown away by their creativity and the fun they had thinking about themselves and naming what was hard for them.

Using Writing Process Maps:

At this point in the year, the writing process map continues to be one of our favorite tools. Some students bring it out with them when we work on any writing, some take it out only at the beginning of a new piece of writing to remind themselves of where they are headed personally in a tangible way. Other students, when they hit their grumpy frustrated points, get reminded by a teacher to go look at their process and see where they are in it. They often point to a spot in the map where they typically feel low and follow their map to move out of it. They gain some perspective and they keep trekking through to wonderful and challenging process of writing.

Try it out!

We would love to hear if anybody tries this with their students and if so, how it goes. Feel free to take a look at some of our students’ maps down below!

Sending you our best from D.C.

Steps a student wrote for themselves for how to move through their "failure wall" 

 

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Econ 101: Wealth Distribution Simulation

"I learned that the small population of the upper class have more money than the huge population of the middle class. I do not think it is fair because a small amount people get a huge advantage over the massive amount of people in the middle/lower class."  

That's right, today in class we talked about the very agreeable subject of…. Money! We started our Economics unit yesterday with a simulation. In our activity we had the students do IR (independent reading) in spaces that simulated how wealth is distributed in the US.

For example:

• 1 student has 11 chairs (wealthiest 1% has 42% of US wealth)

• 3 students have 9 chairs (next 9% has 36% of US wealth)

• 22 students have 6 chairs (bottom 90% has 22% of US wealth)

This part of the simulation was all fun and games for us. We squealed and giggled and playfully whined about our legs being squished trying to cram onto those 6 chairs. But then…

We brought out two large doughnuts, and we split the doughnuts along the same proportions. As you can imagine, this made the division of "wealth" much more real. The complaints about 'fairness' and frustrations began to fly. After the students representing the bottom 90% had a few minutes to squabble over how to split up the remaining part of a doughnut between all 22 of them, we called all of the students back together for discussion.

We started by asking: How are you feeling right now? Students went around and shared one word summing up their current emotional state. Many students said “unfair,” while the student who represented the top 1% said “deliciously luxurious.”  

Other questions we asked were:

What did you notice? How might you have felt or acted if you were in a different group? What are you thinking about money/wealth? What connections can you make to your life or to the world around you?

A very rich discussion ensued, including students reflecting about how they learned how to talk about money (or not talk about money, as the case may be). They described how it felt to learn about the reality of wealth distribution in our country, but simultaneously try to figure out how to feel sort of comfortable doing so and avoid being rude or making people feel bad.

Another image - the 2 parts really help students conceptualize the numbers!

Below are a few of our additional thoughts (from discussion time but also students’ homework reflections):

Here are some things that make us think about money:

• When a bill comes (like the water bill)

• When my mom goes to the bank

• Electronics

• Gifts

• When other people talk about it

• When people talk about their gifts

• Houses.. And other people’s houses

Here are some questions we have now that we have entered our initial study of economics:

• Around how many people are in the upper class?

• Besides housing, food, and care, what advantages does the upper class have?

• What if you make little money (so you are considered experiencing poverty), but your parents give you a lot of money. What “class” are you in then?

• What would it be like if, for a different country, people did the same thing and calculated the distribution of wealth. What would it be like?

• Out of all the people in the middle class in DC, how many people are in the upper middle class?

• Will there be a test?

• What class is my family in?

Let us know if you talk about money, wealth, or class in your classroom. How do you broach the topic? Do you discuss class issues? Study Economics? We'd love to hear!

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Our workshop at the Capitol Area Progressive Schools Conference

On Friday, we were fortunate to be part of the contingent from our school attending the Capitol Area Progressive Schools (CAPS) conference! The conference was held at another area progressive school and teachers and staff from seven other progressive schools were in attendance. 

We were excited by the prospect of sharing our simulations and curriculum with local schools as the possibility of continued collaboration is so much higher when you are in the same city! Our workshop centered around the social justice work in our classroom, with participants actually experiencing two activities we created ourselves: our drawing activity that highlights internalized stereotypes and our pom pom simulation. 

As always, our participants brought their own unique perspectives, responses, and reactions to our activities. During the drawing simulation, multiple people mentioned they were consciously trying to "resist stereotypes," which is an illuminating exercise on its own.

Round 1: collecting pom poms (wealth and power)!

During the pom pom simulation, one participant interpreted her instructions for collecting pom poms her own way to make sure she was successful (and she did end up in Group 1!), while others noted how quickly they decided that one or two pom poms was "enough" to show that they made an effort. Group 1 (the wealthy and powerful) worked together creatively during Round 2 (making "baskets" of paper balls to increase your group's wealth) to put all of their paper in the basket, and then sat down to be out of the way so the two other groups could continue to try to gain more wealth. After a few seconds sitting down, one of them realized that by standing at their line they were blocking the other groups, so he stood up again to get in the other groups' way! One of his group members quickly joined him. They reflected afterward how as soon as one other person acts, it gives you the opportunity to follow without worrying what others will think of you.

Round 2: Earning more pom poms as a group! Group 1 is sitting down at this point..

While the group dynamics and self-realizations were (and always are) fascinating, we also had a productive discussion about how this is applied in our classroom and how it could be applied in other situations. One teacher asked about how to support students who are in the minority so they feel like part of the discussion, but not targets of the discussion. We talked about checking in with certain students before or afterward, and having everyone respond to prompts about their own experiences (and NOT their classmates'). Another participant asked about how to modify these activities for younger students, which is something I have always thought about as a former first and second grade teacher! My initial ideas were making the drawing activity into more of a story or narrative (without providing details related to gender, race, background) and asking the students what they imagined or "knew" about the character in the story or having the students illustrate the story and compare their illustrations. Simulations can be confusing or misleading for very young children, so the pom pom simulation would need to be rewritten and crafted in a less abstract way.

We also now have two potential visitors to our classroom! We are hoping to welcome them sometime this school year. They also invited us to visit their schools. We are excited to see them at work and hear more about the things they are trying out in their classrooms.

I also attended a workshop about incorporating debates into the classroom. Our students really synthesized their learning after our Columbus Day debates, so I loved the suggestions of using debate to analyze characters and engage with literature.  Stay tuned as we will be trying this out soon!

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Presenting at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference

We went to beautiful Portland, Oregon to present at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference (NWTSJ). This conference is unique in that it is organized BY teachers and mainly run by volunteers. It was our first time in Portland and at this conference, and we were loved both (the sun even came out specially for our visit)!

The keynote speaker, Kevin Kumashiro, Dean of the University of San Francisco School of Education, reminded us that education is a social movement and the purpose of a social movement is to change the status quo and the dominant or “common sense” way of thinking. His rhetoric around “common sense” resonated with us as we often tell our students that saying something is obvious or common is NOT an argument. Historically, it was “obvious” (to those in power) for a long time that white men were superior. It also speaks to the relevance of identity and position - once you locate yourself, it’s much more clear why something that is obvious to you does not seem to be “common sense” for others.

Our workshop was entitled: Classroom simulations to confront privilege and internalized stereotypes. We love simulations and were excited to introduce two that we created to other teachers!  The best way to do this, of course, was to have our workshop attendees experience the simulations themselves so they would know best how to adapt the activities for their classrooms and students.

Our first activity involved reading a description of a human and giving our attendees one minute to draw who they visualized in their mind upon hearing that description. We flew across the country with 40+ baggies of crayons so people could draw in color! Despite how unexpectedly heavy that many crayons can make a suitcase, we would do it again. People were forced to decide what skin color the person they were drawing would have instead of avoiding the issue by drawing in pencil or pen.

The reflections and discussion from this activity were fascinating. Someone asked how many people drew 3 or more women (out of 6 people total). Less than half of the room raised their hands. Many people reported trying to “fight” their impulses to immediately go to a dominant or stereotypical idea (for example, a basketball player is black and male), but were still aware of where their minds went first. This cognitive dissonance seems to be articulated more by adults as children usually just confidently forge ahead.

Next, we led participants through our beloved pompom simulation that we created to teach our students about privilege and systemic poverty and oppression. In this activity, pompoms simulate wealth and power and participants learn about and feel the effects of privilege as they go through three rounds of opportunities to earn and distribute “wealth” (pompoms). Since space was tight, we actually did Round 1 (collecting pompoms) in the hall! Attendees were given slips of paper with instructions ranging from “You can use your hands and move around in your normal fashion” to “You may only use your two pointer fingers behind your back.”

As you can see, participants jumped right in! A few people worked together, and - this was a first - one person even ended up in Group 1 (great wealth and power from many pompoms) because he said he wasn’t allowed to move his feet so everyone around him helped him! He later admitted he felt a little guilty for profiting from help to move into the exclusive Group 1 and in Round 2, helped the other two groups make “baskets” by having them pass their paper balls up so he could put them in the basket for them! He made the connection to tokenism and our conversation could have gone there for the rest of the session!

Our attendees level of helping each other and working together was something we have seen very little of when we’ve done this activity in the past (both with children and adults). One participant said she felt that she didn’t “earn” the pompoms when someone gave them to her so she felt that voting to redistribute them didn’t appeal to her as it would be less than satisfying. Members of Group 3 (least amount of pompoms) noted how quickly they felt marginalized and cast aside. One person said she immediately felt de-prioritized when I didn’t even write “Group 3” on the board, as it was just “everyone else.” Others noted how their behavior was influenced by knowing that they were at a social justice conference and not wanting to look “bad” by being too competitive! As always, it was wonderful to hear reactions and thoughts about the reflections and responses we hear from our students.

One important reminder that came out of our workshop was how fortunate we are to be teaching at an independent school where we have a lot of freedom over our curriculum and activities as well as the support of our administration. Many of our workshop participants were public school teachers with less autonomy over curriculum and teaching methods and it was inspiring to hear how they forge ahead anyway. We also received some great suggestions and ideas about how to extend our simulations and connect student experiences to learning in other ways.

We are feeling refreshed, energized, and enthusiastic about continuing this work and collaborating with other educators!  Some questions we were asked that we are still pondering include:

• How do we make sure that students understand these systems of oppression hurt all of us?

• How can this work be done different contexts (public schools or schools less flexible curriculum mandates)?

Please share your thoughts, comments, and questions below!  We want to hear from you.  Let's stay connected.

 

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How do we START? Setting up a community that talks about current events!

Is it only Wednesday? There's so much happening this week!

The world keeps spinning! In our classroom especially there is a buzz about the upcoming election (especially the debates) and protests on protests on protests. One realm of protests our students have some background on in different capacities are the Black Lives Matter protests, largely the sports related ones. Another area of protest news that we have had energy around is water protectors against the DAPL (largely from us, because that protest has had a severe LACK of coverage).

All of this is to say, while we have been working hard in 5th grade to tackle routines and settle in for the school year-- the world continues on! Finding the time and space to be informed about these news stories and issues can seem daunting and frustrating.

Meet… the current event case studies block!

We created this block using only one hour of instructional time to give our students the time to get 'briefed' on multiple different news issues. We do what many people call a jigsaw.

How it works:

• Students vote for issues they are excited and interested about.

• They get assigned a work group in which they study a topic (Immigration to the US, Campaign 2016, BLM, Water Protection.. etc)

• They are given a document with a list of resources. One resource is a 'Must read' and is an overview of their topic. We also provided some "Must watch" resources for some groups.

• Once they have completed the mandatory reading, they had choices of reading anything from the second list of resources. We love to find places for choice!

• Then they had time to talk with their group and take notes: What did they learn? What is going on around their issue? What are they still wondering about?

• They prep to share for a collective 2 minutes (in an informal way). They need to be ready to brief the class so we can all be filled in on the topic.

The benefits:

• They are excited about reading the news and the world around them

• They practice research skills without feeling like it is tied to a big project (it has been a great spot to observe how our students approach research at the beginning of the year)

• Independent time and group time give them multiple ways to process tough information and build on their ideas

• They have some ownership to be in front of the classroom with the responsibility of filling the rest of us in on what they have learned

• It is dynamic (and fun!)  

• It gives us a great starting point and a basic foundation about these issues for every single student

• It sets us up as educators to be responsive and to continue to have conversations and bring in different news stories as the year progresses

We love current event case studies as a way to get the year started and as an accessible way to progress with integrating world events into our curriculum. We highly recommend it! How do you all get started talking about the news with your students? Colleagues?

More soon! 

Nina + Gabby 

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Update from the Classroom: Covenant Usurp Simulation!

Background: 

Following the Responsive Classroom model, the norms and expectations in our classroom are called our 'covenant'. 

In our classroom, we spend the first month and a half (!) trying to sort out what we value individually and as a class, so that we can create a covenant that feels true to us. We have three dynamic simulations in which students 'experience' Anarchy, Totalitarianism, and Republicanism.  After each class period, we reflect on each government model to decide what we like best about it. We take these positive aspects and try to figure out how we want our classroom to run and which pieces we would like to incorporate into our community. The covenant is a labor of love and becomes all their own. This year, our class created a written covenant, a song (they are an incredibly musical bunch), and a logo which was "reproduced" (AKA copied and laminated) for everyone to put on their lockers, computers, notebooks etc.. 

The idea is that our students sincerely care about their covenant. 

One simulation we do as a part of our Indigenous American/ American Indian/ Native American Studies unit is to have our covenant... usurped! 

How it works: 

This simulation requires 6th graders (older students) to come into the classroom and they tell the 5th graders that their rules are useless, they will not be prepared for 6th grade, and ultimately, they give the 5th grade class new and 'better' rules. We then dramatically take down all aspects of our covenant and the 5th graders become upset and frustrated. We spend the rest of the day/lesson abiding by the new rules put on us by the 6th graders. 

*FYI. Prior to this simulation we have given students plenty of background about European contact, along with discussed methods for oppressing Native people in the US (extermination, assimilation in boarding schools, forced into debt, reservations...). 

The response and reflection: 

This simulation is a visceral experience for students as their rules, community, and classroom culture is taken away from them by a group of people who have no context to who they are or what they have been working on all year. As we debrief this simulation we STRESS repeatedly that we would NEVER want to simulate any actual aspect of disenfranchisement of Indigenous people, and that this experience is a mere sliver of shallow understanding that might create more space for empathy as we continue our unit (and our lives). We come back to this point repeatedly. 

This covenant usurp simulation helped students be more invested in our discussions and learning about  people who have been in the Maryland and Virginia areas for thousands of years. We especially love the passion they bring to their work after this simulation, and their increased determination to comprehend  American history better, from essential points of view, and in more depth.