0 Focus, Focus, Focus!

There's a temptation to follow many streams of thought, action, and questions.

Yet, true satisfaction and a job well done demands that individuals study the landscape and choose a focus.

As I've noted before, my focus centers on classroom craft and effort--the job of teaching children well.

What does that mean as I continue down this path?

At this time, that focus means the following initiatives:

• Continued analysis of the MA Teacher Evaluation Rubric -a document that essentially outlines the attributes of a job well done with regard to teaching children well.  I will analyze standards two and three this week. This is the summary post for Standard One. 

• Reading Teach Like a Pirate using either a Kindle app or the Kindle.  This will finally be the needed step into ebooks, a practice I'll explore with greater depth with my students in the fall. I find that only when I use a tool myself first that I am able to use that tool well with students. This step has been on my to-do list for a while without result. Just wondering does Chrome have a Kindle app? 

• I'll engage in the Teach Like a Pirate book group as part of the #educoach chat on Wednesday nights from 10-11 p.m. EST. The chat has wonderful moderators and a committed following of educators. Their Teach Like a Pirate chat began last week so I have some catch-up to do. This post outlines the chat. 

• On July 23, a colleague and I will attend MassCUE's Beta Teacher Event to explore new tech tools for education.  That will be a good day to connect with a colleague who is similarly interested in apt tech integration in schools.

• Then on July 31, we're hoping to attend edcamp Steam in New Jersey to explore more ways to integrate science, tech, engineering, art, and math into the classroom program.

• The first week in August finds me at the wonderful Massachusetts' Teacher Association conference (more like a retreat) in Williamstown, MA--a wonderful location and event for teacher share and professional learning.

Then time for classroom set up and school prep. There's much more I'd like to do as the ed landscape today offers numerous opportunities.  The "if and when I get time list" includes the following inviting learning efforts as well:

• Learning more about the integration of music into multimedia composition.
• Exploring virtual models for math.
• Building the STEAM lab in school with greater intent and effect.
• Planning our student virtual cross country tour--a project we'll implement using multiple tools including Google maps, Google Earth, spreadsheets, and guided research.
• Using online audio tools to respond to student work.
• Creating and/or finding a class social media site (I continue not to be satisfied with the platforms available, but I'm on the look out)
• Giving more time to learning about Discovery Education's new possibilities and tools. 
• Exploring Motion Math's apps on the iPad.
• Signing up for Sum Dog writing, English and math for this year's class.
• Resigning up for Xtra Math since they archived the lists.
• Exploring Khan Math with greater depth.

Hence, there's no shortage of education tools and practice to explore, that's why the continued efforts to prioritize and focus are so essential in our world of limitless learning today.

What's your focus as you look ahead? How will you set goals, prep for school, and find time for fun, family, and friends too? If any of the events above interest you, please join my colleagues and me in this regard. In a sense, we're moving in uncharted territory when we consider a professional landscape with so many choices and at the same time so many requirements (new standards for professional practice and teaching too--common core).  

Hence, the need for prepping our priorities, revising as needed, sharing our journey with others, and then acting with intent.  

Onward!

0 Does a Passion Become a Pattern?

Does a passion become a pattern?

I've always enjoyed drawing and writing, but in the past that activity was reserved for a journal next to my bed, doodling during presentations, workshops, and classes, and required project work.

The advent of email, collaborative documents, Twitter, websites, and blogs changed that quiet, individual passion by providing an accessible, at-home, cost efficient way to write, draw, publish, share, learn, and revise.

Hence, what was once a passion alone is becoming a pattern--a daily pattern of writing, illustrating, sharing, and revising.

At this stage passion and pattern are colleagues and competitors.  Passion would like take all the minutes of the day, while pattern urges order, balance, and rhythm. The two feed each other creating an elasticity and energy similar to images I've seen of atoms in motion.

So does passion become a pattern?  Or is the energy of passion too chaotic, powerful, and unpredictable to become a pattern? What do you think?

Afterthoughts:
I'd like to make a movie of this question with SCRATCH

0 Publishing an eBook?

Now that my blog is so extensive, it's time to start publishing short ebooks of similar content to share with colleagues near and far.

How will I publish my ebooks?

There are multiple tools online that support this process.  There are also multiple tools for advertising, sharing, and selling these ebooks to interested educators?

My latest blog stream, the Self Reflection Posts related to the New Massachusetts Educator Evaluation Rubric, has spurred this next activity because these posts will serve teams and individual teachers well as boost their craft and skill to both meet new standards and to teach children well.  I also believe that these posts will support preservice programs in Massachusetts and elsewhere with strength since the posts help educators to utilize the suggested process with specific actions that they can easily apply to any content or skill area.

I'm excited about this project because a meaningful project always fosters tremendous learning, learning related to process, new tools, and the related mindset.

I'll carry out this activity in the following way:

1. Transfer related posts to one document.
2. Edit and revise.
3. Transfer to an ebook platform.
4. Publish on my own and/or publish with the help of other organizations.
5. Share the ebooks with interested parties for free or for a fee (tbd).
6. Assess the effort, and plan for next steps.

Whenever we embark on a new learning effort, our students profit as well.  Perhaps I'll be able to choose a publishing platform that I'll later use with students as they publish their fictional narratives or personal essays--time will tell. 

I welcome helpful tips or links as I embark on this process. I also welcome colleagues who are interested on embarking on a similar journey to join me as we navigate this new course of learning and sharing. 

As always, so many paths to travel and so little time.  Onward!


Helpful Links:
ebook sites

0 Collaborative Unit Design: Process

If you want to build community and collaborate with strength, then plan to revise or design a student learning unit with students, educators, and/or community members.

Working together to design with a common purpose demands the best of us, and brings us forward with collective skill, creativity, and learning.

Yet, often when a group gets together to plan, they don't have a research-based, efficient road map to follow.

Hence, I offer you the unit design template below.  This template is based on my learning design research over the past few years and the expectations of the new Massachusetts Educator Evaluation Rubric.

You are welcome to use this template to guide your independent or collaborative unit design processes.  If you have ideas for enrichment or revision please let me know.  Also please contact me with any questions you may have.

Interdisciplinary Unit Planning Template

Use this step-by-step planning template when planning a unit of study collaboratively or on your own to effectively teach children and to also meet the MA Evaluation Standards. You can skip around as you create, it's not necessary to complete the chart step by step.  

You can easily make a copy of this document on a Google doc and share the document with all collaborators so all can add/revise information as identified and developed. Decide on a collaborative process for revision so that individual’s work is protected. Note that it is easy to add or delete table rows if needed.

1. Determine Unit Rationale, Standards, and Title:

Pose the title as a question:

2. Keep a list of materials and resources that will be added to the unit website after the initial planning stage.

Teacher Resources Books, Links, Workshops. . .
Student Resources: Books, Websites, links, games. . .
Materials: (including technology)
Resource Sites: Museums, Nature Preserves, Zoos. . .
Activities:

3. Use common core, state, and local documents to Identify the standards that you want to embed in the unit design:

Subject	Standards
ELA
Math
Tech
Social Studies
Science
Other

4. Discuss and chart how this unit will appeal to students’ interests, passions, and developmental level.

5. Learning today points to a need for skills thought of as 21st century skills or life long learning skills. These skills prepare students well for the world they will be live in.  Discuss ways that the unit will develop these skills in student learners.

Skill	Ways this skill will be incorporated into the unit.
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity
Critical Thinking Skills

6. Students respond to learning that is meaningful and relevant, learning that they can connect and develop with engagement. Also, substantial learning exists when students synthesize and apply their learning as well as teach others. Discuss ways that this unit will have meaning, relevance, engagement, enrichment, connectivity, synthesis, application, and opportunities to present to, teach, and coach others.

Unit Attribute	Ways that the attribute is exemplified in this unit.
Relevance
Meaning
Engagement
Enrichment
Connectivity
Synthesis
Application
Presentation, Teaching and Coaching

7. What skills, concept, and knowledge do you hope students will learn as they engage in this unit.  Define the “success criteria” related to this unit. Since most units are presented to a diverse group of learners, educators may want to design the success criteria that responds to three levels including review (meets standards prior to grade level and lays a foundation for grade-level learning), grade-level, and enrichment.

Level	Success Criteria
Review
Grade-Level
Enrichment

8.  How will you know what students know before starting this unit study? How will you incorporate this information into the unit design and execution.  

Unit Pre-Assessment Design, Analysis, and Use.

9.  Design the overall roll-out of the unit in general with a step-by-step unit map.

(Leave space in the unit design for student choice and voice whenever possible)

Unit Step Description (listed in order)	Approximate Dates

10. Create a Unit Website that includes the following:

I like to use Google Sites, but there are multiple website tools available.  Here’s an example of a unit website.

• Unit Title
• Unit Rationale: (research, student interest/passion, developmental appropriateness)
• Unit Standards
• Success Criteria
• Plan (the schedule of learning experiences and expectations)
• Resources
• Enrichment (Extras)

11. Design unit specifically using this lesson design template for each lesson or group of lessons, activities, and events. Add specific lesson information to website as desired.  

• Consider students’ ages, unit depth and breadth and desired effect when making the decisions about what specific lesson information and links to add the website.
• What website information will support students’, colleagues’, and families’ learning review, efforts, enrichment, and celebration?  
• Note that lesson design today can be considered lesson choreography. See related links: http://teachwellnow.blogspot.com/2013/02/todays-lesson-plan-ma-educator.html , http://teachwellnow.blogspot.com/2011/11/lesson-choreography.html

12. Review unit design, website, lesson plans.

13. Collect necessary materials and adapt room design to meet unit requirements.

14. Share the unit plans and website with the learning community: students, families, educators, leaders.

15. Execute unit roll out.

16. Analyze summative assessment and unit roll-out.  Make decisions about unit revision and growth.

0 The New Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation Rubric: Actions?

I spent this week carefully analyzing the new Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation rubric elements for Standard One: Curriculum Planning and Assessment. You are welcome to read all of my specific posts (links at the bottom of the page), or you can simply use the information in this post to lead your efforts in a way that will meet Standard One with strength.

I completed a self assessment connected to the nine elements associated with this standard, and then turned the assessment into a color coded action list with the following categories:

With many of the elements' expectations I created a lesson design template and unit design template that leads curriculum planning and assessment forward with the intent and focus of the Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation Rubric.  This was a complex task, but a worthy task since the Massachusetts' rubric represents thoughtful, research-based, student-friendly learning design. On my self analysis document, the areas highlighted in purple represent ongoing learning design work that will be done during the school year independently and with the learning community: students, families, colleagues, leaders, and the community.

A number of expectations related to Standard One need to be planned for and prepared prior to the school year in order to be effective with regard to student learning.  I highlighted those activities in yellow.  The new standards do require substantial school year preparation, much more than the average classroom or subject-area teacher can do in the one or two days of standard prep during the professional year.

Standard One also has substantial implications for professional learning. This will differ from teacher to teacher. I highlighted the implications for my practice in pink.


You are welcome to use the links included on this post to match your professional practice to Massachusetts' Evaluation rubric.  In doing so, you will set the stage well for a proficient or exemplary evaluation, and for a job well done when it comes to teaching children well.

Please don't hesitate to forward comments, ideas, or questions with regard to this work.  I will continue to reflect on the rubric as I tackle the remaining 24 elements.


Reflection Links:

Reflection #1

Reflection #2

Reflection #3

Reflection #4

Reflection #5
Reflection #6
Reflection #7 
Reflection #8 
Reflection #9

Collegial Collaboration
Lesson Planning Template
Unit Design Template

0 Teach Children Well: Journey of Self Reflection #9 (1C3)

This is the final element for Standard 1, 1C3: Sharing Conclusions with Students on the MA Teacher Evaluation Rubric.  To me this standard essentially outlines the need for teachers to have regular, individualized coaching meetings with students.  The teacher as coach is an effective educator role. The key to meeting this element is to set up a student coaching framework at the start of the year with a guiding coaching template, data/performance charts/portfolios, and start-of-the-year umbrella goals for the class.  The first student-teacher meeting of the year should include the child's initial assessments (shared as appropriate related to student's developmental level, social/emotional readiness), the class goals, and a discussion aimed at creating student goals for the year in general, and for the first period in the teaching year (six weeks, two months?).

Standard I: Curriculum, Planning, and Assessment. The teacher promotes the learning and growth of all students by providing high quality and coherent instruction, designing and administering authentic and meaningful student assessments, analyzing student performance and growth data, using this data to improve instruction, providing students with constructive feedback on an ongoing basis and continuously refining learning objectives.

Indicator I-C Analysis: Analyzes data from assessments, draws conclusions, and shares them appropriately

Element 1C2: Sharing Conclusions with Students

Criteria (from exemplary rating):

Models and Establishes early, constructive feedback loops with students and families that create a dialogue about performance that create a dialogue about performance, progress, and improvement.

Key Points

• Establishes early constructive feedback looks with students and families. What is your family- and student- feedback loop with regard to student learning?
• Create a dialogue about performance, progress, and improvement. How do you support family and/or student performance meetings with a focus on coaching?

Educator Self Analysis Document

My self reflection:

Reflections' Links

• Reflection #1 Subject Matter Knowledge
• Reflection #2 Child and Adolescent Behavior
• Reflection #3 Rigorous Standards-Based Unit Design
• Reflection #4 Well Structured Lessons
• Reflection #5 Variety of Assessment Methods
• Reflection #6 Adjustment to Practice
• Reflection #7 Analysis and Conclusions
• Reflection #8: Sharing Conclusions with Colleagues
• Reflection #9 Sharing Conclusions with Students
• Reflection #10: Quality of Effort and Work
• Reflection #11: Student Engagement
• Reflection #12: Meeting Diverse Needs
• Reflection #13: Safe Learning Environment
• Reflection #14: Collaborative Learning Environment

Reflection #15: Student Motivation