Tag: Learning

Starting the School Year with Fun!

by Celaina Huckeba, posted in Learning, talking, Teaching

I blogged about back to school last July here: Starting off the School Year. Since it is the end of July–it’s time for another back to school post! My blog last year was about my mistakes in reading the syllabus on the first day and not making it fun! So on that note, here are some ways you can make the first few days of school more engaging!

Check out this Indiana Jones group activity to make going over your syllabus, policies and procedures more engaging (from Ryan Stephans of Summit Trail Middle School who adapted it from John Meehan @MeehanEDU).

Check out some Classroom Management Tips for High School classes here: Students of History

Have students use emoji’s and words to write about what they are most looking forward to for the school year. You can ask them to write about: — your content specifically
—the school year
—their extra-curricular activities
—what they are passionate about
—how they learn best
—what they look forward to in a teacher,
—and so much more!
This is a good one to use INSTEAD of asking how their summer was. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, around 25% of children in America will experience at least one traumatic event by the age of 16. That means there is a very good chance that one or more of your students had an event during the summer they don’t want to talk about. Or some of your students may have struggled to find full meals over the summer, they may have searched for stability and a routine, and so they are looking forward to the return to school!

Facing History has a great back to school toolkit for getting to know your students and building a strong community in your classroom. You can download the lessons and use all of them, or just parts! Screenshot below of the lesson options.

Icebreakers that Rock from Cult of Pedagogy has some great ideas!

Have students play Ask, Ask, Switch with some icebreaker questions. Create little cards with questions on them. Students find someone across the room to partner with. The partners ask and share answers to the question cards they have. They then switch cards and find a new partner.

Student Surveys–have students complete a student survey about their likes, hobbies, favorites, and expectations for learning in your classroom. Here are ideas from:
—Education World
–From Pernille Ripp’s Blog
–From Catlin Tucker

Scavenger Hunt–this is a fun one to do if you are also using it to teach content (think about Geography and using it as a map skills lesson). You can use GooseChase (but it’s only free for up to three teams) as a digital option or get creative and use Google Forms with branching!

The Card Tower–What do we have in common? Divide students into groups of four. Give each group a stack of index cards and the challenge of being the group who builds the tallest card tower in the class. But there is a catch! Before they can use the card in the tower, you have to write something on it that every member of the team has in common. Set a timer and watch the kids have fun learning about their commonalities.

So….what are your plans for the first days of school? What are you going to do that builds safety, community, and fun so students look forward to your class?

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Improving PLTs

by Celaina Huckeba, posted in Uncategorized

If you’ve been around education, you have probably heard of DuFour and PLCs, or Professional Learning Communities. We have been working on growing the success of PLCs (we call them PLTs, for Teams) on my campus for a few years now. We started the improvement process by focusing on the Team Leaders and equipping them with the tools they need to lead an effective team by modeling growth and learning.


“Highly effective teams know what we’re working on, why we’re working together and how we’ll work together.” – Elena Aguilar

In planning the team leader training we (the ICs on my campus) found there is a plethora of research out there on the importance of teams for student achievement. It was difficult to curate through all of it to narrow down a focus for success for the needs of our campus. We used a lot of Elena Aguilar’s The Art of Coaching Teams. If you are working on teaming on your campus, that is a GREAT book to use! We also used Marzano’s: Collaborative Teams that Transform Schools.

We are still, of course, working on this as a campus. Growing the team leaders and improving how teams work together, learn together, analyze student work together, and takes risks together is crucial to the culture of the campus and to improving student learning outcomes!

A resource that we did not dig too deeply into (as we had so many others already), was to look at Learning Forward. Recently, Stephanie Hirsh from Learning Forward wrote an article that was very helpful in reminding me of the work we still need to do on campus and was a great way to refocus our efforts as we start the spring semester! Check it out here: Edweek–PLC by Hirsh

So, as you begin (or maybe you have already begun) 2019, how will you improve your PLC time? If you focus on these three things from Hirsh, you are on your way to success!

The data is out there! PLCs (or PLTs as we call them) are crucial to improving teaching and learning. They help teachers and students succeed!

  1. A cycle of learning–everyone on the team commits to learning! Plan the lessons, do the lessons, talk about the lessons/student work, and then make changes!
  2. Curriculum–do you know your standards (or TEKS as they are called in Texas). What is the district expectation for your curriculum? Have you really dug into it? Have you unpacked the TEKS (here is one I’ve used for teams on my campus as a guide, and it goes along with backwards planning guide I created with another IC on my campus), taken time to develop the lessons, apply your understanding of the standards and of the needs of your students?
  3. Assessments–Do you have common assessments with your team? What about formative checks? Sometimes we focus too much on the summative assessments and forget to check for understanding along the way. Formative checks (DAILY) are crucial to be able to adjust your lessons immediately and keep a pulse on the success of a particular strategy or lesson.

What are PLCs/Collaborative Learning Structures like on your campus? What successes have you seen? What struggles do you have?


“An ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve”

– DuFour, DuFour, Eaker & Many

It’s been awhile…

by Celaina Huckeba, posted in culture, Learning, Teaching

So my blogging goals for last school year definitely slipped away from me! So back at it now, as better late than never, right?

Today was the first day of the Cy-Fair Digital Learning Conference. DLC is a great conference that CFISD organizes each year at the end of July. I think today they said about 1700 educators were in attendance–fantastic for summertime professional learning!  I went to a great session on PLCs. It is fascinating to hear about how other districts (and campuses for that matter) view PLCs. Some view it as something to be done and for others, it’s not even on their radar.

I also presented a session today on Blended Learning and how to use academic texts to facilitate discussion in any classroom. It’s my 3rd year presenting at this conference and I’ve enjoyed sharing my learnings each year on different topics. This year, Lindsey, the Science IC at my campus presented with me. It was fun to collaborate on the session and really great to see how no matter what content you teach, having students reading and TALKING about their learning is crucial to engagement, complexity, and deeper thinking and deeper meaning for students. I also was excited to share articles that can be used in Math classes as well as that is often something that is shied away from. But hey, I believe that we are all literacy teachers! Everyone has the responsibility to teach students literacy, and in today’s climate, it is also crucial that we look closely at sourcing and teach students corroboration!

Day 2 of the conference is tomorrow. I’m looking forward to presenting again with Lindsey and then checking out some Google tools.

Keep on learning this summer! What have you learned so far?? The school year is coming soon and it’s going to be a GREAT one!

 

Strengths

by Celaina Huckeba, posted in #Immooc, Uncategorized

Do you know what your strengths are? What about your weaknesses? Is that something you think about or talk about often? And speaking of weaknesses–I dislike that in an interview question. Do you like it? It is a tough one to answer when attempting to persuade someone to hire you based on your skill set, but then have to explain to them where you have deficiencies.

My husband is currently working on his masters (to gain administrator certification). One of his first assignments was to complete a Kiersey Temperament Survey. It was interesting to read his results as they fit how I view him already, but it made me look at his personality through a different lens when he and I discussed it. That conversation led me to start wondering about personalities and strengths.  In life, in teaching, in your day-to-day, do you know the strengths of those around you? Do you know their weaknesses? Do you use that knowledge to your advantage? How? With my husband, because I’ve known him for 15 years, I have a solid grasp (I think) on his strengths and his weaknesses. And I try to mindful of those when we disagree on things in our lives, with work or with our kiddos.  But for the teachers I coach, do I use that to my advantage? Definitely not enough. I’ve known them for only two years, but that should not be an excuse. The teachers here have completed the Strengths Finders training/survey and I have access to that actual data showing their strengths. That is something I need to start leveraging and using to become a better Instructional Coach.

So then, that makes me think and wonder further.  For teachers and for their students…how does knowing student strengths and weaknesses enable teachers to maximize student learning outcomes? If you know what your students are good at, how can you use that to further their learning? To inspire their creativity? To encourage more problem solving and critical thinking? How can you highlight the areas where your students excel so that you can build their motivation and self-esteem? I think you use it when planning lessons, when picking group arrangements for activities, when organizing reading and writing strategies, when planning interactive, hands-on vocabulary lessons, and etc. You should be purposeful when thinking about how the students as individuals are going to achieve their learning objectives for the day.  Which can be so HARD! When you teach 180 students and have to work hard to plan lessons to engage students, to cover the curriculum, to fit the vision of the campus, to follow the state standards, and etc, it makes it seem impossible to then break down those lessons even further to cater to the needs of individual classes or students.  How do you manage? How do you fit in innovation and use strengths to maximize the learning in classrooms?

It’s in pockets, right? In small pieces? You fit in some creativity here, some new strategies over there. You try new things, take risks, find out what works for you and for your students and what doesn’t. Then you go share! You blog, tweet, go to PLCs. You lean on your colleagues to give you inspiration and you lean on them to push you to keep thinking for new ways to teach, to inspire, to learn!

The Land of the Book Study

by Celaina Huckeba, posted in #Immooc, Teaching

In my previous district, we occasionally talked about what we were reading. I read a lot of fiction for fun, aligned my reading to a host of Young Adult books so I could share insights and hear insights from my students in my classes and in my homeroom class.  I had a group of  big readers in my homeroom and loved it!  But for professional learning books–we really didn’t do a lot.  I followed blogs, keeps up with an rss feed in google reader (before they discontinued it) and occasionally checked out a book about teaching social studies.  Fast forward a few years and move to a new city, new job, no students (but still in education)–now, in my job, EVERYBODY reads professional books.  Or at least pretends to read them, ha!

I started this job in August of 2015. It’s now January of 2017, so 17 months later and I’m looking at a stack of books that I’ve been given either as part of a book study or suggested reading, or I’ve pulled to read myself and the stack is tremendous!  I’ll post a picture next week when I can gather all the books from my home and work so you can see the size of it! I’ve enjoyed most of the readings and book studies, but definitely miss that stack of Young Adult fiction (like Legend, Cinder, Candor, Unwind, etc) and the students to chat with it about.

I’ve posted previously about meeting Eva Kor in October. Eva and her museum do a book study program where you can purchase 30 books for students and set up a Skype date with Eva.  Finally!! I can squeeze in some time with students to talk about reading and about history, my 2 favorite things!! I miss keeping up with Young Adult fiction, but I think Eva’s book is so powerful that it is easily filling that void of talking about books with students. We started our book study last week.  We’ll meet every week to discuss the chapters until the end of February when I will get to experience the students talking with Eva herself.  I’m feeling like the start of 2017 is going amazingly well!

What books are you reading?  For fun?  For work? Share your ideas so I’ll have new suggestions on what to read!

I’m reading:

  • Surviving the Angel of Death by Eva Kor
  • The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
  • A book by Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of…)
  • And I just finished Sycamore Row by John Grisham

A few of my favorites from last year include:

  • Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
  • The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros
  • Ditch that Textbook by Matt Miller
  • Better Conversations by Jim Knight
  • Lemons to Lemonade by Zimmerman and Garmston