New Blogger

Take the time to check out my colleague Danielle Speiser's new blog at http://daniellespeiser.blogspot.com.  Her bite sized posts are a quick read, yet full of wisdom.

Welcome OCTE Conference Colleagues . . .

. . . and future edubloggers!

Here are a few of the links I spoke about briefly:
Dan's Concept Checklist
How Dan Assesses

My Reading Skills Sheet

I also referenced a couple posts about why I blog and an example post for when I had a question rather than a great idea to share.  Feel free to read these if it is helpful.

Below are links from the handout. Feel free to continue the conversation we started today in the comments, and please let me know when you start blogging - I want to steal your ideas!

Great Edubloggers to Follow

Kylene Beers, Language Arts
Dina, Language Arts
Dana Huff, Language Arts
Bud Hunt, Language Arts / Technology
Clay Burell, General Education
Dan Meyer, Math
Kate Novak, Math
Karl Fisch, Math / General Education / Technology

An added bonus for blog visitors: to the left of this post you can find my aggregator and recent posts I've read and enjoyed.

Put Together a Reading List

Step 1. Choose a reader.

Google Reader is a popular web based reader that also has some social functions built in.

FeedReader I haven't used; I actually just found it with a Google search. You download it to the computer, connect to the internet, download your feeds and then can read offline.

Firefox, the web browser, also has a feed reader built in if you're not ready to dive into a separate account or program.

Step 2. Find a blog.

Some good ones are up top. You can also go to those blogs and see who they follow (look for a sidebar titled “Aggregator” or “Who I Read”).

Step 3. Find the rss feed.

Usually marked by an orange icon that looks like the one at the top left hand corner of this page labeled "Posts."
Right click on this icon and select “Copy link address.”
Paste this into your feed reader.

RSS feeds can be a pain sometimes. With many feed readers, if you can't find the rss feed, you can just enter the blog address. If you're using Google Reader, you can also look for an "Add to Google" button.

Step 4. Read regularly and repeat.

You don't have to read everything a blogger posts. You won't be able to once you build up your reading list. Just browse for the titles and authors that catch your attention.

Starting Your Own Blog

Step 1. Choose a blogging service.

Blogger is a completely free blogging service also run by Google.

Edublogs has a free account option, or you can pay for more features.

Word Press is a free blogging platform, but you have to find hosting for it. This offers more features, but the average individual will have to pay for a web hosting service.

Live Journal hosts your blog but puts ads on your site.


Step 2. Sign-up for a blog.


Step 3. Write your first post. You could just polish up the one you wrote today.


Step 4. Post a comment about it here so others from the conference can read your posts.

Setting the Tone Recap

Before school started, I was a little apprehensive about how to set the tone for the year.

After writing that post, I thought Marzano (2003) might have something in Classroom Management that Works.  Turns out there's a whole chapter on "getting off to a good start."

While there hasn't been enough research on setting the tone for Marzano to do a meta analysis, the chapter did confirm the direction I was already leaning towards: thaw slowly.  Hit them hard at the beginning of class and lighten up towards the end as warranted.

Turns out that's totally the way to go, at least compared to what I've done in the past¹.  Overall, I've had the best week of my career, including classroom management.  I think it's partially this slowly thawing attitude I've adopted and partially the techniques I've taken from my summer reading of Teach Like a Champion².

The rules I outlined in my previous post are posted prominently, but the procedures are posted in this PBIS matrix suggested at an in-service last spring.

Calendars are still a big part of classroom management, building report, and utilizing exit slips.  My students are now getting 10 points a day and it's 50% of their grade.

I've been most surprised by the willingness students have to adopt some more prescriptive, acronymic, draconian, measures³.  I have a poster that shows students how their desk should look (Lemov, 2010, p 159).  I frequently use SLAT, which stands for sit up straight, listen, ask and answer questions, and track the speaker (Lemov, 2010, p 158).  I'm am surprised by how quickly 7th graders are willing to sit up straight when I ask them to; I was expecting a lot more push back.  My 8th graders make fun of it, but do it all the same.  My students seem more alert and, with tracking the speaker, more attentive of each other.  If I call on a student to answer a question, they can't refuse to try, because the expectation is established that they ask and answer questions.

I more energetic and more dedicated to selling my content (Lemov, 2010, p 51), and it rubs off on the students.  My calendars have a daily rating for whether students felt they learned something new and if they were bored.  I haven't put the data together in a spreadsheet⁴, but by eyeballing it students feel they're learning more and are less bored than last year.  This is partially my energy and confidence, but I think also the amount of content we hit on in a day.  To paraphrase Lemov, just like it seems you're moving faster when flying in a plane close to the ground, in class there are numerous reference points students see in a day and it creates the illusion that we are moving faster (Lemov, 2010, p 226).

Works Cited

Lemov, D. (2010). Teach Like a Champion. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Marzano. (2003). Classroom Management that Works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

1. Oooh, big surprise. Go back
2. Great New York Times magazine article on this book.  Some might complain that it boils teaching down to 49 techniques, but I do think great teachers are made not born.  There is some value here. Go back
3. I'm not sure what word describes SLAT and the desk poster.  It feels weird to me. Go back
4. I tried this for one week last year.  It takes long enough to grade the calendars each day alone - when am I going to analyze data?  If I ever figure it out, it's a post in it's own with some awesome citations of K. Anders Ericsson. Go back