Creating Our Class Contract!

As we near the end of October and my school has its Fall round of conferences with families, I was recently pleased to notice how many of my students use the language of our class contract (rules for our class) in their reflections about how the year is going for them. Creating our contract was a multi-step process starting with a read aloud and ending with a signed contract and accompanying art projects (and of course a shared understanding about the kind of community we want to create).

We started with a read aloud (always a wonderful place to start!). Our first chapter book read aloud of the year is Save Me a Seat by Gita Varadarajan and Sarah Weeks. We read a few chapters and a day and do a variety of responses to our reading to help us empathize with the characters. The main characters’ negative experiences at school provide a contrast as we think about how we want to make each other feel at school.

However, to specifically start our conversation about our class contract (and community) we read The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael Lopez. (This is a new picture book and it is gorgeous! We highly encourage you to read it yourself.) After we read this book, we ask students what we should have on our contract to make sure everyone feels welcome to share their stories and be themselves in our class. We also remind students of their Hopes and Dreams (which we created a few days before) and think about what we need in our classroom to make these come true.

Next, students brainstormed in pairs about their ideas for the class contract. Then, they had time to work independently and wrote down a few of their ideas on a notecard. We reminded students to make positive statements (tell what we should do) and think about the most important things to include.

The next step is to filter the ideas down to bigger ideas so that everyone’s contribution is included, but we also don’t have a contract with 50 rules! We try to show students our process so it is transparent. We do this by listing the final statements we came up with in bold and sorting all of our students’ suggestions under the relevant statement. For example, don’t be territorial went under “know your place.”

The final version of our class contract!

We ended up with 5 statements. The final number of statements can be more or less depending on your students’ ages, but 5 statements are comprehensive enough to cover everything and brief enough to easily remember. We should also mention that this process is Responsive Classroom inspired!

Our final step was sharing our final contract. Everyone in our class signed it (in fancy metallic Sharpie!) to show their commitment to upholding it. When we say everyone, this includes other adults in the building! We also asked students to think about what the contract means to them and pick at least one component of our contract to exemplify through art. They could use foil, popsicle sticks, paper, glue, markers, crayons, and more (really anything we had in the room). Students worked hard to conceptualize something that was important to them from the contract, and we took photos of them with their finished products. Now, our contract and all of our artwork graces a wall in our classroom!

All year, we keep going back to the same language that is in our contract. We notice when we are following it, when we could follow it better, use it to redirect students, use it in our Morning Message, use it on our conference prep social emotional reflection, and more!

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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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Always Ask for Student Feedback!

We try and end every school year by asking our students for their feedback and reflections. Students love this as it is their turn to evaluate us for a change! We love modeling how asking for and receiving feedback is part of learning and growing, as well as demonstrating our commitment to lifelong reflection and learning. Also, I’m always surprised by what students remember, appreciated, and enjoyed. Sometimes, the things they complain about during the school year are the things they say they enjoyed the most at the end.

Some patterns we’ve noticed over the years are that students tend to especially appreciate amazing read alouds, the well stocked and curated classroom library (and personalized book recommendations from their teachers), experiences (for example field trips or guest speakers), games (and fun!), and their teachers (especially encouragement and support).

Here are the questions we asked and some of our students’ responses (in order for the evaluation to feel more exciting and grown up, we had our 3rd graders fill out a Google form. This way, they could choose to be anonymous - new vocabulary word! - or not. We worked up to having students independently use a Google form all year, so having handwritten feedback might be a more realistic/comfortable option earlier in the year). Student responses are in italics:

What is one of your highlights (something you enjoyed) in 3rd grade?

• I enjoyed playing games because I felt like we were all one family.
• woking on essays because it's a project and I like projects especially ones that take a long time and essays take long that's why I like essays. I also like social studies because we did things that involve interacting with each other
• The teachers

What was something that didn't feel good (or was a challenging moment) for you?

• Getting pushed and pushed and pushed (keep going -- I finished.. now keep going moooore! keep going!). I just wanted to be done sometimes! This was sort of a good thing too.
• Learning to type was challenging and frustrating because I was lagging behind. But eventually I got the hang of it. (-:
• Learning to be okay if you make a mistake

Is there anything you are still thinking about (from what we learned this year)?

• What my learning was like ( how much I learned).
• No, well not that I know of.
• What I learned is that you should never judge somebody by their skin color because that is wrong!
• How many essays we could write, how many more topics we could write with essays and how many more chances could we have had if we only did that in writing. I would like to make essays the whole year! no one wanted to do essays when you first said it, but then everyone wanted to do essays once we did it once or twice.

What could your teachers have done better to support and/or challenge you?

• Not a lot. Really nothing because I expanded my learning this year a lot.
• To support me, you could have worn very awesome shirts! (This is hilarious. Clearly, I need to go shopping for awesome shirts before the school year starts!)
• giving me more books.

What did your teachers do well (to support and/or challenge you)?

• They were always helping me and making me a better writer through their advice.
• well, they pushed us more to work harder and have more fun while we work not just ' oh work, blech!' it was fun learning too, not just learning school blech! It was fun, because our teachers are fun! yay.
• Gave us a lot of game time!!!!

If you could change something about 3rd grade, what would it be? Why?

• It would be using our computers more often because, using computers helps us type faster and better (more stamina). (They were only allowed to use computers during Technology class once a week and for “publishing” their writing).
• Something that I would change about 3rd grade is the amount that we have in writing and Social Studies because those are my two favorite subjects in Homeroom.
• I would change 3rd grade to allow a 3rd grade pet I would change it because I think it would be the little 3rd grade HERO and we would have a good laugh with it
• Maybe they could buy more books. (This is amazing because we went way over our budget because we bought so many books! But of course we can always buy more - there are so many wonderful books out there).

Any other thoughts or things you think we should know:

• 3rd grade was the BEST ever like if I could go on vacation I would go to 3rd grade
• I love your games. They make the world less depressed.
• NOPE (most students said no or just didn’t answer this question).
• That I love reading a lot and I have a big imagination.

While we loved hearing from our students, we reflected that asking 3rd graders about the entire school year on one survey might have been too much at once. This upcoming school year, I hope to find a way to get student feedback throughout the year. Some ideas I am considering are reflections after big projects or at the end of units or maybe something more open-ended. I will keep brainstorming and will hopefully have some more feedback to share this fall!

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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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Mental Health Awareness Month

We feel so strongly about taking care of onself, putting your oxygen mask on first etc. We love the artists above and hope you check out their work as being supportive and encouraging of gentle and loving mental health. We hope this month you are (especially educators!!) taking some moments to take extra care of your mental health. Here are a few things that we do to support and facilitate taking care of ourselves in our little classroom community!

1. We do our best to model good habits with our students always.

One afternoon during pick up time a father said he would send me an email later. His daughter turned to him and said, "Oh, Dad, she doesn't answer emails after 4pm, she has a life!" And although the dad had a surprised reaction, it was refreshing to see a student who had understood boundaries and was happily chatting about them. We had indeed told the students that we love them dearly, AND just like we want them to go home and enjoy their family, hobbies and life-- we do the same and it actually helps us be the best teachers we can be (we reiterate points like this throughout the year).

Along this vein, we also  talk to students about work vs. home life (and their work email vs. personal emails -- see our technology post for tips on how to rollout computer use!).

2. Emotions Continuum, Naming feelings

We have an emotions continuum in the classroom that the students all made cards for at the beginning of this year. In our ideal world, we would have it hung up better (it is definitely falling down!) and we would add to it throughout the year as we learned more emotional vocabulary. In the mornings, students put their clothespin on how they are feeling (we had to remive 'tired' as it was always chosen). This is a nice non-verbal way for students to practice noticing their feelings, sharing them, and for us to see where a kid might be at.

We also often us the language, "I feel/I'm feeling … when....", when students are talking about a dilemma with a friend, or when we have circled back to a problem to practice sorting through, naming, and feeling through our feelings.

In 3rd grade, naming emotions and feelings is hard. Just noticing that a feeling is big, is a huge accomplishment and honestly, still an important life skill. We often say (as the adults, and now our students do, too), "I'm having a big feeling". Naming a feeling as big, is helpful, as a lot of the ways to work through a big feeling (sadness, anger or otherwise) can be similar.

We also use our Anger catchers, and silent signals as ways for students (or us!) to communicate our needs within a room full of other humans. Some students have personalized, more private ones, while there are also general ones (that mean things like, Water break, I'd like a fidget, or Stop, please!).

3. Books, books, books: Book clubs/ read alouds/ responses

Can you tell we would both live at a library if we could? Alas, they are so amazingly useful, though! Our read alouds are overflowingly full of opportunities to discuss how to take care of ourselves, others, or what to do when we (or someone else) doesn't feel well mentally or emotionally. Our read alouds this year that really supported our mental health work were: Out of My Mind, Rain, Reign, Save Me a Seat, and Hello Universe (among many others!). They led us to conversations about friendships, bullying, loneliness, and ultimately had us think a lot about: How we take care of ourselves? Others? What works? What doesn't?

We had written responses (this gave us time to practice our comprehension and cursive, too!) after almost every read aloud. These responses from the read aloud were just for teachers and the student, which gave it a bit of privacy and let students really reflect on connections to their own lives. Our students carry a lot on their shoulders and in their minds, and we found this time ended up being really important and supportive of their mental health.

Book clubs gave us a more intimate time to really think about ho we're feeling and how we relate to characters or messages in a text. We especially loved Alvin Ho (he has a therapist, has to practice talking out his feelings, and he reminds us it is important for dads to cry!). The book that brought up endless conversations about mental health was Every Living Thing, a somber collection of stories with tons to talk about (depression, caring for others, being lonely, anger, fear, how to heal etc..). Students blew us away in this book group, by the way they were willing to share about themselves and how they take care of themselves. It was nothing short of beautiful.

4. Unwinding-- Christie Zimmer makes great printables that we use for morning reflective work / afternoon unwinding. We also take daily breaks for wiggling or games (so many games in this classroom!), and team building. We make sure we have least some fun every single day.

5. Celebrate :).

We try to celebrate as much as possible! We celebrate our reading, our writing, how fast we did something in a timed challenge, that we found all the commas in the morning message-- it's fun to enjoy our little community. We've found that leaving the space to crack up about something that happened that was funny is such an important part of being together in a classroom... And it makes us all so happy.  

Graitutudes -- Part of our celebration work, is actually the celebration of others. We give 'kudos' every day for different things others do that we appreciate or find congratulatory, and it always makes us feel good to share our appreciation of others. Morning work in our room is often a thank you card to someone and the students love volunteering to be the one delivering these to people in our building. Now that we can see the end of the year in sight, we are astounded by how much our crew has grown. And we are sincerely grateful, we get to work hard, play hard, and grow with a ton of wonderful young humans. That is something worth celebrating!

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Womyn's/ Womxn's/ Women's Herstory Month!

It's Womyn's Herstory Month! Every day is women's day etc etc.. and yet, we are also loved celebrating women and putting women (besides ourselves!) even more at the forefront this month. Full disclosure we are both huge book people so the list of books could go on for a while. Below are a few fantastic anthologies that we turn to often in our classroom and have used for many different projects throughout the year. We put these in the front of our room and hype them up extra for this month (along with books from March Book Madness especially Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, I Dissent, The Water Princess, and Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean's Most Fearless Scientist).

Through these read alouds (which the student's have been loving and asking for more of!), we've enjoyed the way we can tie this into conversations about maps in Social Studies!

In Reading, we've been working on "thick" and "thin" questions (thin questions you can look at text and simply identify the answer, whereas thick ones require some thinking and we especially loved some of their questions about Annette Kellerman (1886-1975) from Shaking Things Up, and why bathing suits even needed to be designed for women, or why women would be told wear corsets in the first place (this conversation became very fixated on corsets at one point)...

We love this multiple perspective narrative-- a lovable cast of characters and so much suspense! 

We also started a new read aloud, Hello, Universe! We got to a scene where the main character's dad scolds him and says, "Boys don't play piano!" and our room erupted in silent signals meaning "agree" or "disagree". Our students had a lot of opinions about this (especially a few of our boys who play piano!), and we had passionate reflections after that read aloud block as to how gender should never dictate what any human has access to.

In Writing, we have been wrapping up writing about people from history (most of them are women, although not all) and we are now writing about someone we love (many of which are women!), which has been such a great way for our students to see mirrors of themselves, or windows into someone else's life experiences.

On International Women’s Day, we started our day by writing letters to amazing women in our life and telling them why we appreciate them. Students wrote to teachers, babysitters, moms, aunts, grandmas, and even women we had read about (Dominique Dawes reppin' Silver Spring, Maryland got quite a detailed letter from one of our students! It included a very self-aware: "I know you are busy but please please reply! K, thanks!").

We also went to one of our favorite bookstores  (and places!) in DC, Politics and Prose! We loved getting to see Patricia Valdez, who is an amazing scientist and author (AND is also a woman!) who wrote the fantastic book, Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor: The Woman Who Loved Reptiles. We were all enraptured learning about Joan Procter (1897-1931), and the way in which she took such thoughtful care of reptiles, learned so much outside of college, and designed such intentional spaces for them to live. Her design of the London Zoo reptile house is something we all decided we must see! (and it is in a Harry Potter movie so of course we found that oh, so exciting).

All in all, it has been a blast to put an extra spotlight on womyn and we could go on forever, of course, with all of the endless ways a human could be an inspirational woman. As we wrap up this month, we take the energy that our students have about finding new role models and guideposts in their lives, and carry it with us as we strive to be the best we can be, too!

We feel so wonderfully saturated with inspirational women this month-- maybe we'll go to bed listening to Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls new podcast! And one more book we love below (we warned you)! 

Biographical Essays: Researching People Who Inspire Us

We have been working hard on a nonfiction biography focused unit in Reading and an essay writing unit in Writing. Students perused the biographies we have in our classroom (so many amazing picture books and the Who Was.. series that is at a good level for 3rd graders), and then chose three people they’d like to research and write about. We had already done a number of read alouds of picture book biographies so were able to get our students excited about people they weren’t initially familiar with and showcase some amazing women and PoC. We also looked at photos, video clips, and listened to music. They were hooked!

One thing that was important to remember going into this unit is that research is not only done through reading (even though we love books and LOVE recommending books to children) - we used photos, videos, video clips, maps, and more! Photos are a great way to start talking about primary sources AND verifying information using more than one source. Ask a student to look at a photo and share what they know about the subject ONLY from looking at that photo. You’ll be amazed. Our students were incredibly engaged and motivated and wanted to know all about their research subjects. One child who researched Josephine Baker asked to listen to her music, another asked to read Maya Angelou’s books, and another wanted to look at Keith Haring’s paintings (and more!).

After collecting lots of research, we asked students to come up with 2 reasons why their research subject is or was exceptional and make sure they had evidence to back up those two reasons. We talked about how we might think someone is exceptional (or amazing, awesome, wonderful, etc), but we can give examples to prove it our readers and convince them as well. Our students used a color coded graphic organizer to plan our their two reasons with details and examples.

Our color coded example essay about Jane Goodall.

A note about the color coding - before writing this essay (our any essay), we taught our students about the format of the painted essay from the Vermont Writing Collaborative. We LOVE the painted essay. It’s clear, color coded, concrete, tangible, and organized. We’ve used it with 3rd graders and 5th graders (and have seen it used with younger students) and its structure could help you organize your writing for the rest of your life.

The students used color coded planners to start organizing their ideas and then continued through all the stages of the writing process (they are familiar with the writing process from Writer’s Workshop). One revising technique we found really helpful was having students color their essays (with crayons or colored pencils) to match the parts of the painted essay. This way, when they weren’t sure what color to use for a word, phrase, or sentence, they had to ask themselves if that word, phrase, or sentence needed to go elsewhere. It makes the process of revising for organization so much more tangible!

Mini-lesson on editing and revising using our example Bessie Stringfield essay.

Finally, we shared our essay at a publishing party where family members and the school community were invited to come learn about some amazing people. We loved seeing adults learning about inspirational humans they had never heard about (or knew very little about) like Major Taylor, Wilma Rudolph, Josephine Baker, Misty Copeland, Bessie Coleman, and so many more. While we highlighted these people by sharing incredible books about them, we didn’t say any version of, “Oh it’s Black History Month, learn about black people!” Instead, we said, here are some awesome books about amazing people.. read and enjoy!

Reflecting on the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action

Now that February is ending (how is it already March?!), we are looking back to the beginning of the month when we participated in the nationwide Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.  When talking about something like Black Lives Matter with third graders, we work hard to make sure that the points of entry and examples are tangible, accessible, and developmentally appropriate.

As we reflected on Dr. Martin Luther King Day, anti-bias education is not something we do just one week (or day, or month) out of the year. It is something we try to do all day, every day as part of our curriculum, teaching philosophy, and classroom culture. The people we highlight and celebrate in our classroom day to day reflect the diversity of our world (just like we the teachers do!).

Image from https://wearoutthesilence.org

We started our BLM week by asking students: What do you know about Black Lives Matter? We showed them the image above and then had them reflect using an I think/I wonder chart on large notecards. We were impressed with the thoughtfulness of our students’ responses. They understand that “Black Lives Matter” needs to be explicitly said because we still don’t have equality (as you can see from a few of their responses pictured above).

We continued sharing images throughout the week as an image is a tangible and accessible way for our students to start a discussion or learn about something new. When showing a new image, we would ask: what do you notice? What questions do you have? What do you think you know?

This is a great way to incorporate social justice work on all levels into your classroom - always start with an image! Ask what students notice. Ask what they think they know. Ask what questions they have. They will often surprise you and will have space and time to think deeply and reflect in a meaningful way.

Later in the week, we read this article from Newsela about implicit bias in teachers and how black preschoolers are 3.6 times as likely to be suspended as white preschoolers. After reading the article, we had students write three statements (responses or questions) after reading it (one student's responses are pictured above), and then had a whole class discussion. This example (black preschoolers being suspended at far higher rates) is really helpful for pushing our students to move beyond the idea of history and past discrimination. It provides a way to explain systemic and institutional oppression through a concrete example. The idea of preschoolers being suspended also really upset our students. Many of them made connections to their Kindergarten Reading Buddies (who they read with once a week) and they were shocked that children so young could be discriminated against and suspended.

Another resource we loved (and are keeping until the end of the school year) was our “Black History Month” book bin! As you can see (above), it is bursting with books. Students enthusiastically asked to read books from that bin and recommended them to each other. Important note: these are obviously not ALL of our books about black peoples (or that have characters of color). We have many that infiltrate all other categories. This was one way to organize some books related to Black History Month and Black Lives Matter that really worked for our students.

We also did a read aloud of Milo’s Museum by Zetta Elliot and discussed the book afterward. During the read aloud, students volunteered to explain why Milo might be feeling uncomfortable, and said it’s racist because the painting is uncomfortable (referring to a painting of a white woman and a black woman who appears to be a slave), she’s the only black girl there, and she’s not in the museum! This was another tangible and concrete example of institutional exclusion. Students connected to Milo feeling upset about not seeing herself in the museum and many of them empathized (either through the read aloud or from their own experiences) with the concept that representation matters.

We culminated our week of action by asking students to write their own statements of what Black Lives Matter means to them, and why it is important. We told our students before they started writing that we would read and combine their responses into one piece for all of us to sign and display on our door with our “everyone is welcome here” sign. The process of taking all of their ideas and combining them into one overall statement is familiar to them as this is how we created our class contract.

After we received all of their statements, we spent some time paring them down and choosing parts that summarized overall ideas and came up with the statement pictured below. Finally, we had an  unveiling of our finished class statement and each student came up to sign their initials in cursive (which was a big deal because we had finally finished learning how to write all of the letter in cursive the week before!).  Some of our students also surprised us by creating their own Black Lives Matter poster as a small group and asking us to “put it up somewhere everyone can see it!” So today we have two posters up outside our door.

Did you participate in the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action? What resources or activities would you recommend? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

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2018 New Year's Resolutions in 3rd Grade

We have an annual tradition of writing New Year’s Resolutions with our students, and adapted our ideas from the past this year to work for our 3rd graders. We enjoy this writing piece for many reasons: it often yields inspiring and hilarious responses from students (two examples pictured), it’s a great way to review our class contract and reflect as we come back from the break, it’s a quick and high success writing piece as we get used to being back at school, and of course, it’s important to model reflection and goal-setting for our students.

This year, we used the beloved Kid President video that we wrote about in our New Year’s resolution post last year with our students and their 7th grade buddies. For Writer’s Workshop with just our 3rd graders, we started by watching the New Year’s Brainpop video. It tied in nicely with our geography focus in Social Studies, and reminded students that everyone celebrates (or chooses not to celebrate) in different ways and there are many New Year’s holidays.

Next, we modeled writing a resolution by first brainstorming, introducing the vocabulary word “resolve”, and finally coming up with a plan for how to achieve our goal. We reminded students to look at our class contract for inspiration, and asked them to think about trying something new in 2018. We gave students a graphic organizer with space for brainstorming, and then had them elaborate on two of their ideas by explaining them in detail and then going through the steps of a plan to make them happen.

Two of our favorites are pictured, but we also loved hearing about students trying to be kinder to their family members by giving more compliments, being a better bookworm by making time to read more and try different genres of books, being more patient by remembering that everyone is different and that’s okay, and so much more.

"How do you like me NOW, parents?"

Do you have any New Year’s resolutions this year? How do you get back into the swing of things in January? Do you have your students do any goal setting or resolution writing for the New Year? We’d love to hear from you!

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Holiday Inquiry: Columbus Day

Last week, we reconsidered Columbus Day. While our school does not recognize the holiday and remained in session on Monday, it is still a federal holiday and many of our students’ parents had the day off.

To lead up to our inquiry work, we asked students to respond to the question, “If you could create a holiday, what holiday would you create and why?” for their Morning Work. They had predictably fun and silly ideas - Kids’ Day when you get unlimited candy, Pets’ Day when pets can go everywhere, etc. However, the idea emerged that a holiday is about celebrating someone or something POSITIVE.

Later that week, we did a read aloud of Encounter by Jane Yolen and David Shannon, which tells the story of Columbus arriving in San Salvador in 1492 from the perspective of a Taino child. After reading the story, we had students complete an I think/I wonder chart about the the events described in the book.

We then had a whole class discussion about who Christopher Columbus was, with students calling into question the idea that “he discovered America.” We found San Salvador on a world map, and looked at this map showing his Columbus’s four voyages. Students were surprised that he never actually came to the continental United States, and confused by the idea of “discovering” a new place when people already lived there.

One student clarified, “He discovered the Americas for white people in Europe.”

Other students had questions about how Columbus and the other Europeans with him treated the Taino people. In Encounter, the narrator (a Taino child) describes touching a sword and getting “bitten.” We discussed how there will be an imbalance of power between someone who has weapons and someone who does not. Students asked what Columbus did that should be celebrated with a holiday (other than the previously mentioned “discovered the Americas for white people in Europe.”)

Next, we watched Reconsider Columbus Day. Some of our students had heard of Indigenous People’s Day, but most had not. They liked the idea of going back to their original idea of a holiday to celebrate someone or something positive. One student asked, “Why would there be a holiday for someone who was bad?”

We let students reflect and discuss that question, and then had them write responses to what they had learned and what they were still thinking or wondering about. Many of them still had questions and continued to grapple with the idea of a holiday for someone who hurt other people.

One of our student's written responses after our discussion.

On Monday, in honor of Indigenous People’s Day, we watched Indigenous People’s Day and Daunette on Being Native American. We will continue our investigation of holidays, monuments, and whose perspective is heard, valued, and prioritized all year.

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I Wish My Teachers Knew

Inspired by #iwishmyteacherknew, we asked our students to tell us what they wish we knew about them (and in general). We started by asking them what was on their minds now that they are back at school, and then asked them how they are different at school versus at home. These prompts set them up to share insights with us that could help us know and support them as the complex humans they are. Specifically, we asked if there was anything they wished we knew or anything they wanted to share with us. We also asked how to best motivate them or help them if they are feeling stuck. We were impressed with the depth of thought our students revealed in their answers. Many adults won’t be able to tell you what motivates them or helps them when they are feeling stuck (or will give you a cynical answer that doesn’t really help in the moment), as it requires a lot of self awareness and reflection.

Some of our students wrote about how home felt versus school, and shared that they enjoy the predictability and clarity of school. Others shared about feeling like they don’t get enough attention, or being nervous about events in the world or events in their lives. One of our favorites was a student who said he was, “bored at home because I like learning.” We will remind him that he can read, write, think, and investigate at home too!

Other students shared troubles at home, some with more detail than others. These troubles might range from a less than kind older sibling to discord or stress at home. One student said he wished we knew about some things happening at home, but they were (sic) “PRIVET” so he couldn’t share with us. Another student wrote about often feeling excluded or left out among friends. Yet another wrote about the death of a family member. Even without a lot of details, context, or background, knowing that students are dealing with something heavy at home helps us understand better what they bring with them when they come to school everyday.

We are grateful to our students for giving us more context into who they are. We will of course develop a nuanced sense of how to best challenge and support our new crew of learners as the school year continues. Nevertheless, this one survey has given us plenty of food for thought and a level of connection with one another that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to have at this point in the year. Here’s to starting this year by learning about our students by hearing from them!

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Computer tips: How to rollout the great (but challenging) tool!

Congratulations! Your school has just received a gift or made the leap and decided to be a '21st century' school and now all of your students have….. COMPUTERS.

Dun. dun. Dun.

We know. It's exciting because these tools provide access to so much knowledge and so many resources! It's also terrifying because…well, the internet. We are constantly trying to sort out what it looks like to be the best educators we can be while utilizing the computers our students are lucky to have in our classroom. As we searched around to see how other teachers have rolled out computers, we found there really aren't many resources out there to give teachers the skills on how to unleash these tools that can seemingly do almost anything with their students.

We are still learning and will have new ideas for you as we sort out how this can work best with our 3rd graders this year. But for now, here a few tips we have from our past few years of working with our (5th grade) students and computers.

*Note: Most of these steps should happen BEFORE students even get to TOUCH their computers.*

1. Make an agreement before they even get to touch or use their computers.

*For us, this took the shape of a 'Technology Covenant' in which we agreed upon how they were to be used (bringing in our classroom rules as well) and then we had all the students sign the agreement.

*We also (we wanted to be preventative), had a printed version we called the technology contract that we sent home. The contract said that failure to use the tool properly would result in consequences. For us, the consequences usually meant the computer goes and sits on a teacher's desk for the rest of the lesson. We want to be honest and note that this became challenging at times depending on the lesson (we stuck to it anyways) and sometimes with parents. We make sure to check in with other teachers our students have to ensure we are all on the same page-- miscommunication about expectations leads to endless, "Well, in Spanish we get to….etc!" It is also really important to ask administration what they see the escalation of consequences being and how they want to handle different aspects of misconduct so that you aren't figuring it all out as things come up. Naturally, there will always be surprises!

2. Explain 'work' vs. 'personal'.

We showed our students our work computers. We made a point to talk them through how we email colleagues about work and only about work on these computers. We might make a new document for work. We might look on a website for resources about the Pamunkey tribe for work. We do not use our computers to talk to our personal friends (yes, we do actually have friends..) or family etc. Their school computer is also just that: their work computer. That means it is solely for academic purposes. We also made it clear that everything that happens on their computer isn't private: adults at school can see what is done on it (and we don't want to see any of their personal business please and thank you!). We come back to this when we discuss how to properly email a teacher, as well. It is important to note that they will seek the social options with computer use and that, that makes sense, even though it can be frustrating from a teacher's perspective. We try to give them space on Goodreads as the social outlet, or talking about articles they have read online in groups, as well as having group projects that require a computer from time to time… we're still working on harnessing this!

3. Show how you expect them to carry it, put it away, and be closed if someone is talking.

Modeling all of these expectations makes a difference. We have a rule that all computers must be slanted downwards (or closed) when someone is talking and we wait until that is the case (and ask the speaker to wait) if it is taking someone a moment to catch on. There are few things that would degrade a sense of classroom community and conversation as much as some kids clicking around on their screens while others are talking.

4. Be prepared to differentiate for computer familiarity.

Some students will know how to use the computer with ease, others will be brand new to how to open a browser page. Go through whatever steps (in general) you want them to do and then be prepared to have a stream of questions from some less experienced computer users. We project and go through the steps and have kids keep up with us as best they can. The students who are faster, we ask to turn and check in with their friends who aren't there yet. We also prepare a task ( ie: "You can update your Goodreads when you are done") so that as we check in with students who need more support, our faster students aren't aimlessly on their computers.

5. Have a classroom computer expert.

Along the lines of the strategy above, it was a great confidence boost for some of our students to have this position, and they were very helpful in turn with students who needed support. It's nice for both teacher and the student to be able to say, "Go check in with 'fellow awesome kid' first".

6. Ensure that some sites are blocked.

What can we say? Most young people aren't ready for the depth of the world wide web. As adults, we know we aren't even sure what is out there a lot of the time (and we aren't ready either!). This is not being anti-tech, this is understanding there is a ton we do not understand about the internet. Ask your tech person for assistance. All we can say is it is helpful and prevents loads of unnecessary drama. We all push boundaries and computers happen to be a very fun and sly tool to do so. It will happen at some point, and it is much better to have to shut down kids goofing around about a photo of a man with a duck body and a diaper on (we truly don't know, ask our kids!) than the many, many alternatives.. For us,so far, this also means no listening to music while they work. We've tried it as a support for different students, but we have yet to see it be beneficial enough to outweigh the pieces that come with it.

7. Have a countdown / time warning.

If you're like me, (and most of our students!) it is ridiculously hard to snap out of focusing on the computer. It is hard to stop a task you are engrossed in, in general. As annoying as it might sound, even for older students I'd suggest having a countdown. We give our students a 5 minute warning (telling some of our slower to stop humans that, that means right now), along with a 1 minute warning. From there, we usually have a student countdown (it is the classroom 'timer' job) from 10 in which we have all computers closed and away. By the middle of the year, if we've done some coaching and it is still a struggle, we will simply close computers for students if they aren't ready to go on time. This sets the precedent that shifting gears, means shifting gears and we are done with that tool for now.

8. In lessons, explain everything you need them to know first, then let them open computers.

Along the lines of the previous tip, once their computers are open- you've lost them. Sure they are completely engaged in activity, but it will be pointless to try to wrangle everyone back together once computers are open. Making it the expectation that they come to lesson with their computers closed (or leave them on the table and meet you somewhere else in the room), is a great way to have a clear routine.

9. Be clear about what 'writing' on the computer looks like.

Handing students computers and then saying, 'get started with your writing!' during a writing block is overwhelming for a lot of students and will lead to all sorts of unwanted computer use or unproductive forms of writing. You'll see some diligently typing away (but probably not referencing their graphic organizer!) and others who are typing a sentence and then changing the font size, the color, the font size, the color.. You get the idea. Modeling what writing time looks like with a couple different options is very helpful. We had all students fill out graphic organizers on paper first in the beginning of the year before they could go get their computers and start drafting. As the year went on, some students had graphic organizers we emailed to them that they could type into as a form of differentiation, while others needed to still use paper first. We also have a rule that you cannot change font or colors or anything else in your document until you have been approved to do so by a teacher. Especially for our students with focus challenges, the computer can be captivating and distracting in ways that are hard to reset from. We are also fans of having students print out their draft to edit a hard copy-- they catch so many more mistakes and actually learn how to edit!

10. Be patient with yourself/ them-- we're all just trying to figure computers out!

Computers are fantastic tools. The worlds they open up and the resources we get to use are invaluable. We especially love Newsela, Goodreads, BrainPop, Google Docs, NoRedInk, and more. With these great tools, comes a territory of students learning how to use them in school while also taking in content or other skills. Those are a lot of moving pieces. In addition, whole class lessons getting students set up on a new account or something online always requires a ton of calm on our end-- if anyone has tips for that please share!

We're grateful for the computers in our room and hope that some of these tips help you feel a little more prepared as you roll out computers in your room. Onwards!

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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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Storycorps inspired storytelling project

Storytelling is one of the best units I have ever taught. It seamlessly integrates our Reading and Writing instruction, encourages students to use their voices and consider other perspectives, develops communication, presentation, and persuasive skills, and both pushes and allows students to express themselves in a new way. One of the stories we have our students write and perform is inspired by Storycorps and based on an interview with someone close to them.

The Storycorps inspired story is the 2nd writing project of our storytelling unit. Timing wise, it usually coincides with Grandparents and Special Friends Day (a tradition at our school), where grandparents/special friends come to school with students for a shortened schedule. We use the Homeroom time to watch Q & A, an animated Storycorps interview by a child named Joshua of his mother. After we watch the interview, we have our students interview their grandparents and special friends. Every year, we regret that we run out of time to hear from more of the students after they discover fascinating and unexpected facts about their grandparents/special friends.

Once we are back to regular classes, we introduce the new assignment and project. We ask students:

Whose story would you like to tell?  What does it mean to share someone else’s story?  Why might we want to do this?

Then we watch a Storycorps interview. We find that the animated ones are better for our 5th graders in terms of maintaining attention. Two we love are Facundo the Great and Mario & his daughter. Next, we brainstorm some interview questions and do peer interviews to try them out! Finally, we explain the assignment and hand out a list of questions. We give students a few days to interview someone and record their interview. We’ve found it helps to give them over the weekend in case they want to try and interview someone who doesn’t live near them over the phone.

We created our own list of suggested questions using Storycorps Great Questions. We also ask students to record their interviews and email or share the recording with us. Many students used their parents’ phones or tablets to do so, but we also walked them through how to use Vocaroo which is a free site where you can record audio and easily the files. We also encourage students to take notes either during or after the interview. Students brainstorm who they would like to interview. For many students, it is one of their parents, but we have also had students interview nannies, grandparents, uncles, and siblings. Our only stipulation is that the interviewee is not too young (older siblings work better), as we need them to have enough material to write a story. Storycorps also has an app and resources to make the process easier (and they go on a mobile tour!).

After all the interviews are completed, we start the brainstorming process! We ask students:

What understanding did you gain about your relationship with someone after interviewing them/hearing their stories?

We let them talk this out either with a partner or sometimes use inside/outside circles to let them work with a couple different people.

Next, we have them reflect and get ideas down in their Writer’s Notebooks. We then transition into showing them a graphic organizer so they have an idea how to structure their stories. We created and filled out this graphic organizer based on Felicia Pride’s TEDx talk, We’re all characters in life’s great narrative. We watch this TEDx talk earlier in the unit when we talk about characters in stories and how a “real” character is multi-dimensional. It is a great resource to look back at when students feel stuck.

After filling out the graphic organizers, we let students draft, edit, revise and finally share! They have three minutes to perform their story for half of our class (13 students). We set the room up in a TEDx talk like setting, with a stool to sit on, a “backdrop” (we project an image on our whiteboard!) and the overhead lights off with a lamp “spotlight.”

The stories our students share are truly amazing. We have heard reflections on relationships with parents, including a touching story of a child’s father and his many siblings. She reflected how she always wanted a sibling, but realized she has someone to go on silly adventures with already.. her dad! Another student interviewed her nanny and told the story of getting through an earthquake together and how this made her rethink the concept of “family” to be more inclusive of everyone she loves. We heard stories of love, hope, resilience, immigration, adversity, and relationships. We love witnessing this wonderful exercise in taking someone else’s perspective and learning about yourself in the process.

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End of Year Feedback from Students

Well into summer, I finally have some time to sit down and reflect on the school year! One piece I wanted to take a closer look at was the end of year evaluations from students (of us!). Gabby and I created a Google Form with seven required questions and an optional anything else you’d like to add (they are all listed or summarized below in bold font). We then asked our students to give us honest, thoughtful feedback as part of our reflection and planning for next year. We find that using a Google Form and having students respond on their computers often causes them to write more and feel more “anonymous” and empowered to be honest.

There are many reasons why we ask our students for feedback. Primarily, we do want to know what they are taking away, thinking, feeling, and reflecting and student evaluation of teachers is an important and often overlooked resource. We also want to give them an opportunity to practice using their voices and saying what works/doesn’t work for them. Also, we want to model being open to feedback and self-reflective! On top of all of these reasons, 5th graders are hilarious and we wanted to see what they would say.

Our first question was a highlight (something you enjoyed) from 5th grade.

Some trends among the answers were:

Storytelling:

“One of my highlights for fifth grade was the Storytelling unit. I LOVED doing it because A: I love hearing stories and B: because it was really fun to perform and learn about things I never knew about my dad (I interviewed him) and details about things that happened to me when I was little.”

Simulations:

“I enjoyed the simulations like the bead making food eating office working simulation because it showed us how it feels like to be less than or not to give up”

Social Studies/current events

“I loved reading and talking about current events because it was interesting to find out what was happening in the world. Though I didn't enjoy annotating, I think it will help me in middle school.”

Funny/Unexpected:

“Halloween”

“I enjoyed how understanding the teachers were. Like, one time I did all my homework but I forgot my homework folder, and I was so disappointed. Instead of getting mad at me, you guys just said I could borrow someone else's word study sheet since it was Friday and I needed to take the word study test. Even though I was sad, it didn't go as bad as I thought it would go, and that was a highlight of my year.”

“I really liked word study, even though I am not the best speller in the class word study has helped me a lot. Also I loved doing the quizzes at the end of the week and getting are grade back ( even though sometimes it wasn't the best grade. ) Overall word study was a fun part of homework in 5th grade that I enjoyed.”

I love that word study was something that at least one student enjoyed, as it is annoying for us (teachers) to put together and grade and most students complained about the word study homework incessantly.

Next, we asked what was something that didn't feel good (or was a challenging moment) for you?

Trends:

Too much HW

Writing by hand

Virginia Indian Case studies (but felt proud of getting through them)

My personal favorite response:

” I think that the puberty/health and wellness was challenging for me because I would laugh at everything you would say about it.”

I love this because this was how I usually feel when teaching Health & Wellness.

Next question: How did Social Studies feel for you? Was it too hard, too easy, or just right? Which parts? Why?

These are important questions for us to ask because sometimes we think our content is too challenging and intense and wonder if some of our content is more appropriate for middle school.

“Just right. I loved SS this year. It was fascinating [sic], and sometimes scary, but always the truth.”

Good to hear! Most students said just right, or if it was hard at times, they later expanded their understanding.

Is there anything you are still confused about from Social Studies? Is there anything you are still thinking about?

“I am still thinking about The Trail of Tears. This event made me wonder how much of history is covered up, and how much of history do we still have to find?”

“I left SS this year with some questions like "why does the world have to be so cruel\rude\angry when we can all just focus on the good things?" and "why blame other people for things they did not do? As [another teacher’s name] says, 'life is ment to build people up, not break them down.'" But those questions were things that I wanted to strive to answer (and maybe change) when and as I grow up.”

These are issues I continue to think about as well..

What could your teachers have done better to support and/or challenge you?

“call on me more randomly because i don't usually raise my hand”

I love this because at the time you know they resented us for calling on them when they didn’t raise their hands!

“During this school year I have learned that saying "no" and "i don't agree" -- not just exclamation points !!!! -- is totally OK (thanks Ms. Arca) but this time I really don't think there is anything I can add in this column, because this time, there really IS nothing to say!”

What did your teachers do well (to support and/or challenge you)?

“They were willing to help and had really good and helpful advice and if you didn't ask to meet with them they might ask or hover over your work to help and support you and I liked that.”

“The teachers did well in reminding us that if we need help, you need to ask. I liked this because it got us ready for sixth grade, and made us feel independent. It also made us feel supported to know that we have have help if we need it.”

“One out of the many things the teachers did well to support me this year is non-pushy random check ins because I know that I am the kind of person who doesn't come up to a teacher right away if something is bothering me -- though i probably should! -- and so those non-pushy random check ins are really helpfull for me.”

Nice to hear - obviously we will continue to check in with and push our students, but it’s good to know it is appreciated (eventually). I also find the awareness that learning to ask for help is a life skill impressive.

If you could change something about 5th grade, what would it be? Why?

General trend: more simulations, less homework, don’t change anything!

“I would make more simulations! I loved the simulations, they were so fun, and it was cool to be "in the shoes of" the thing/person/religion you guys are trying to teach us about. Also, it was great to learn things in a fun way.”

Any other thoughts or things you think we should know:

We always ask, just in case, but responses were along the lines of no, 5th grade was great, see my earlier answers.

It’s comforting to hear that students don’t feel confused or overwhelmed by the curriculum and appreciate the honesty and reality. We fully expected storytelling to be a highlight, because it is amazing, but also because it is the last literacy unit of the year and our Final Stage show is the culmination of our year together.

I also wasn’t surprised by the positivity around simulations, but the self-awareness and reflectiveness shown when students were able to say that they had moments of empathy or experiencing someone else’s perspective (although, of course, a simulation is NOT THE SAME as real life).

Asking students for feedback is always surprising, amusing, and gratifying. In this age of all kinds of evaluation systems for teachers, I find that I am the most motivated by my observations, student work or growth, and student feedback. It doesn’t have to be formal or written, but I hope to continue to incorporate student feedback and reflection into my teaching next year. How do you ask for and receive student feedback? How does it inform your teaching, learning, and planning? We'd love to hear!

Visit from a Storyteller!

We were incredibly fortunate to have the one and only Anne Thomas come in and visit our classroom! Her visit is an annual tradition as part of the introduction to our storytelling unit and it is a day we look forward to all year.

My co-teacher Gabby and I first saw Anne perform at a Story District show in DC, and were immediately impressed. Later that week, we emailed her, casually mentioned we were her biggest fans, and asked her to come visit our class. And so the tradition was born!

Our storytelling unit is an integrated Reading and Writing unit that takes place every spring in our 5th grade class. Students read, write, listen to, and watch amazing stories. Before Anne’s visit, we had read some great stories with the kids (including Mr. Tiger Goes Wild, by Peter Brown) and talked about what components are key to having a great story.

Our "A Good Story Must Have" checklist: an invaluable tool for readers, writers, and performers!

Students brainstorm in pairs and come up with a long list of important attributes of a good story. Then, we introduce our ‘A Good Story Must Have’ checklist. This is a key tool we use as readers and writers throughout the unit. We start finding these elements in our independent reading books. Next, we tell the students that we have a special guest coming in..

And the guest is Anne! She talks to them about storytelling as an art, how we are all storytellers (you’ve never told anyone the story of how your day went?) and then performs a story in the room with us! The story Anne performs is about going to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, but it is also about the danger of imposing limits on yourself.

After Anne performs, students have an opportunity to ask questions (which often has to be limited or they would go on forever) and then we go through our checklist to see if Anne’s story has all of the elements a good story must have. (It does!)

Next, Anne asks students to think of a time when they imposed a limit on themselves. It can be as small as telling yourself you don’t like a vegetable without trying it. Students brainstorm individually and then work in pairs or small groups to tell their stories. Anne works with students too, helping them pull a story out of their memories or experiences.

Finally, we ask for volunteers - does anyone want to get up and try to tell their story to the class? Amazingly, some students always do! This year, we had three students who stood up and told their stories (coached by Anne) with bravery and honesty. They talked about doubting themselves as athletes, writers, and more. They were vulnerable, honest, and brave. Their classmates were impressed and inspired and ready to find their own voices as storytellers.

We cannot wait to see what our students come up with next and we are so grateful that Anne came in and shared her craft with us. Stay tuned to check out some other pieces from our storytelling unit, leave a comment and ask us questions, or check out this piece on how it comes together and why we do it.

 

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Our SOME portrait project: how and why we do service learning

Service Learning

In 5th grade we do a service learning experience that aims to honor what is developmentally appropriate for 5th graders and prioritize maintaining the utmost dignity of the others.

Service Learning is such a complicated realm, as we work to ensure that we don't "otherize" or create complicated (and potentially problematic) narratives about what 'help' is and who helps whom.

Our SOME (So Others Might Eat) project is one of our favorite service learning experiences, because we think it does work towards our ideals of what service learning should look like: meaningful to all, authentic, and a learning experience!

The Process!

Our project starts when 5th grade goes to study portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery- learning about how portraits are about more than just a face, but the stories behind those faces. Those stories are the key aspects that get incorporated into the art you see!

We then prepare questions, how to ask politely about other people's lives, how to work through nerves and awkwardness, speak loudly and enunciate etc.. and we also learn about SOME and they work they have done and are doing in DC.

Then 5th grade goes to SOME's Kuehner House (which provides affordable housing, activities, and other support to seniors in the community). During our visit, each student gets partnered up with a participant and interviews them. We spend about an hour together, sharing stories, taking notes, and taking pictures of one another.

5th then goes back to Sheridan and begins to work on creating portraits that capture aspects of their new friends’ personality and stories. These portraits take us a long time because we work really hard to make them as special as we can!

Excitedly (and with a different type of nerves this time!) we head back to SOME to revisit the senior participants and deliver our artwork to them. This project brings joy, dignity, and stories to both parties, and thus it is a service learning experience we continue every year. Take a look at some of the portraits our students have done -- we are biased, but we think they should be in the National Portrait Gallery, too!

This year, we were thanked with a performance by two of the seniors: beautiful singing accompanied by keyboard playing.

We'd love to hear what service learning experiences work for you all in your schools and programs. What does it look like? How do you think about it?

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The Message We Send When We Try Not to Talk About Race

We submitted a piece about an experience from our classroom to Embrace Race, a multiracial community of people supporting each other to help nurture kids who are thoughtful and informed about race. It was published recently!  Please read The Message We Send When We Try Not to Talk About Race and let us know what you think.

75th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066 (Japanese Incarceration) Resources

Sunday, February 19th is the 75th anniversary of the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 (in 1945) which led to the removal and internment of approximately 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Many of them were US citizens. Many of them lost property or were forced to sell at a loss when they were removed and relocated. I personally find “relocation” and “internment” misleading as people were incarcerated and given no choice about their removal from their homes.

Image credit: http://hdjapaneseinternment.weebly.com/uploads/6/8/7/3/6873644/9418554_orig.jpg

While this shameful occurrence in American history is and always will be relevant, it feels especially relevant today with the recent Muslim ban, fears of a Muslim registry, and frequent executive orders. You know your students and school best, so I compiled some resources to potentially use in the classroom. This list is by no means exhaustive, so please comment if you have other resources you’d recommend.

In our class, we will start with a sign in on our front board with images and the writing prompts “I think..” and “I wonder..” We will respond to students’ questions and clarify misconceptions.

Image credit: http://katieyamasaki.com/work/fish-for-jimmy/

Later, we will do a read aloud of A Fish For Jimmy by Katie Yamasaki. It has gorgeous illustrations and is a tale of an older sibling taking care of a younger sibling, so many of our students find the main character relatable.

We will also look as some images from this photo essay: Photo essay with some background information from the Atlantic

We will watch the video below by Frank Chi. This video is poignant and clearly makes the parallel to today without directly saying anything political. It’s worth watching yourself and sharing with others even if you don’t share it with your students.

Muslim Kids Read Heartbreaking Letters From WWII To Show How History Is Repeating Itself

Other resources:

Eight Essential Japanese American History Books for Young Readers

Life in a WWII Japanese American Internment Camp (educator resources from the Smithsonian Museum of American History)

Oral histories from of Japanese Americans from Telling Their Stories (Elders interviewed by students - this is a great resource for Social Studies teachers in general!)

Information about the Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. U.S., which legalized Japanese-American internment.

Zinn Education project related lesson and materials archive

We'd love to hear if you use any of these or have resources you'd recommend of your own!

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Factory Simulation

“I don't understand why other companies treat their factory workers inhumanely if you can still be successful if you treat people like people.” 

Economics 101 is in full swing in 5th grade!

We tried out a BRAND new simulation today and were reminded how difficult it is to check all of the details for experiential learning activities. Whew!

That being said-- we are pleased with what our students experienced and how they are now thinking about different types of work, wages, and the many levels and layers of circumstances that can alter people's financial stability.

SET UP:

This one is complicated to set up. We have three groups, and each group had different tasks and varying working environments:

Office workers (5 students)

• Task: read news articles and created a presentation
• Could takes breaks whenever, used computers, talked with one another, had company snacks (pretzels).  

A group of unionized factory workers (11 kids, based off of Alta Gracia and employees we interviewed there this past summer-- check them out!!!)

• Task: creating beaded bracelets according to strict requirements
• Had organized break times and healthcare (we created a water issue that affected the entire city they all worked in), but still needed to meet deadlines etc.

A group of factory workers (10 kids, based off of Levis and Timberland factories we learned about this summer).

• Task: “food production” (food was drawn on paper)
• Had to stand the entire time, no healthcare, no breaks, no clean water

We also ended up having a 4th group (slightly unplanned..) who ended up being unemployed (they went on strike and their classmates did not follow them so they got fired!). They were hired for temporary employment by the office workers and did small jobs around the classroom. This proved to be an interesting dynamic that added to the simulation.

EXPERIENCE:
Students work hard following the directions on their assignment sheets. Every once in awhile teachers would come over and say it was 'pay day' (we had 3 of these) and give each member of the group the points they earned for their work. For the most part, the students worked really hard at their jobs and had interesting conversations about quality of their work environment and how to best navigate it. The majority decided to 'put their heads down' and work harder.

TWISTS:
Teachers also came around when it wasn't 'pay day' time and provided circumstance cards that students needed to calculate into their paychecks. The circumstance cards ranged from "Your child had a fever, you bought medicine -2 points" to things like "You have had a death in the family and you need to cover the funeral costs". There were multiple health related cards that could add up (hand pain from repetitive motions, back pain, breathing issues from dust in the factory) all of which we learned different individuals suffered from especially in the Timberland and Levis factory locations. These cards began to frustrate students and heightened the stress in the room. Of course there were some cards (especially for the office team) for getting +4 for a promotion or a boss noticing their hard work.

Another twist we saw was that some of the Office workers went to 'donate' points to the factory workers. They donated 1 point to each person. (They were making 100 points per paycheck while the non-unionized factory workers were making 10 points per paycheck). It was interesting to see the different responses to these donations and how some of the donations didn't help people's overall situations.
 

THEIR REFLECTIONS:
Our students were STRESSED!!! They talked a lot about how they were worried about making deadlines, how hard they were working, and how scary it was to receive a card and know you were barely keeping any money. A couple of them talked about how they felt they weren't paid for the level of work they were doing and felt like no one noticed how HARD they were working. The bracelet group made extra bracelets in hopes of a raise and they didn't receive one.

OUR OBSERVATIONS:
We found it fascinating to see the conversations about strikes and organizing.

We found it really interesting to see how the 'financial' hits felt -- from the higher Office group one student talked about how she took a big hit one week taking care of a family member and then she felt bad that she didn't want to be part of the office people who donated money to the factory workers who didn’t have clean water. And then she realized exactly how little her peers in the factories were making and felt like she should donate.

Overall we noticed that emotions ran high, we appreciated their thoughts on continuous stress and will continue that conversation as we take on other's perspectives -- constant stress is a very challenging struggle and we are glad they have the teensy-tiniest insight into what that might be like for someone.

We are thinking about the twist with unemployed workers and temporary workers (they would work for even 1 point) and how that added to the overall experience of learning about labor (even though we didn’t plan it). Next, we are going to work with the Math teacher to create a budgeting simulation!

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