Squishy Not Slick

Apr 30

keys

This idea, and many of the keys, came from a colleague of mine. Here’s how it worked: I got enough keys for all my students, and then made a tag for each key with a single, made-up line from a story. I threw the keys in a jar, and each student got to pick out a key. The assignment was simple: tell a story that makes that line make sense. The story lines:
* She gave me the key, then walked away, dragging the terrified child behind her.
* He looked behind him then whispered, “This key fits the third door.” He handed it to me then walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
* There on the rock, waves crashing around it, waited the key. The oars creaked as I rowed towards it.
* When the thunderstorm had finally passed, I saw a bit of metal by the road. It was a key.
* Why was there a key in the ice cream cone?
* I knew it was old, but which of these musty boxes, here in this spider’s nest of an attic, would the key fit?
* I hate this key and all the trouble it has caused.
* The key’s ridges were cutting my fingers, but I wouldn’t let go.
* The key fit locker #365 at the airport. What had they left me?
* He looked me in the eyes and whispered, “I got a key too, and it’s just like this one.”
* As the key sunk through the waves, I knew I’d be getting wet very soon.
* The key spun through the air. Four hands reached for it. Who would catch it?
* There was a 50/50 chance that this was the right key. I put it in the lock and hoped I’d picked the right one.
* A key was taped to the bottom of his top desk drawer. And there was a note.
* “It was an inside job! This key proves it!”
* She sighed and handed over the key, knowing that months of work had just been lost.
* She collapsed in the meadow, exhausted. She rolled to her side and something sharp poked her in the ribs… a key!
* Through the decades of dust, a clear set of footprints was visible. leading deeper into the tunnel. I held the key tight and followed the footprints.
* She shoved aside cartons of spoiled milk and packages of moldy cheese. There it was in the back of the fridge, just like he said: the key.
* When he woke that morning, he never imagined that he would have to deal with both magical keys and hungry zombies.
* The package, postmarked thirty years in the future, was tiny. She opened the box to find a key.
* He couldn’t disagree. When he held the key, he too felt like a numbing cold creep through his body. * They found the frozen corpse at the bottom of the cliffs, a single key still clutched tightly in his left hand.
* A carrier pigeon was pecking at the window, a single key tied to its foot.
* They found the key at the bottom of the well, just like the treasure map showed.
* Like a shiny promise, the key taunted me, sparkling inside the glass case.
* I could see the key in her hand. And she saw that I saw.
* How in the world had this key followed me from Iowa to Oregon?
* I’d had the key in my pocket since Tuesday, but I didn’t know it.

I still feel like some of those lines are pretty lame, but overall, the students seemed to like and some fantastic stories were created.

Feb 21

“Basically, here’s how it works: Students are given a weekly grid and must select at least three daily activities from a “menu” of 10 categories. Those include pleasurable reading (such as books, magazines, recipes, newspapers); physical activities (walking, biking, skating, swimming, playing sports); hobbies (sewing, gardening, photography, caring for pets); art projects (painting, drawing, collage, dioramas); and community service (mowing a neighbor’s lawn, playing a game with an older person, picking up trash).” — the kind of homework that should be assigned

Feb 09

This has something to do with teaching (pt.11)

“Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids’ spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves… One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. … Delphine said that she never set out specifically to teach her kids patience. But her family’s daily rituals are an ongoing apprenticeship in how to delay gratification.”
– Pamela Druckerman, Why French Parents Are Superior

Feb 08

this has something to do with teaching (pt. 10)

“What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsible, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods

Jan 28

playing with blocks (or how to teach the writing process for a five-paragraph essay to a 1.5 year old)

Oct 11

The hard lessons learned by KIPP, and what we can do next

Sep 13

did a professor plagiarize a professor who was plagiarizing an already professor-plagiarized sentence?

This has next to absolutely nothing to do with the theme or thesis of this little tumblr, but, well, I needed somewhere to put it. So, here it is.

Let’s call this a plagiarism activity.

Let’s lead with this question: did a professor plagiarize an already plagiarized sentence? Did something more complicated than that happen?

I was just doing some reading and noticed how a few people (ok, not just people, professors, tenured professors even) have remarkably similar sentence structure when writing about the same idea.

Here’s Allington:

Stotsky (1984) synthesized the research on writing-reading relationships. She found better writers read more than poorer writers, better writers tended to be better readers, and better readers produced more syntactically mature compositions than did poorer readers.

Here’s Goen-Salter:

There is a demonstrated connection between learning to write and learning to read. Better writers do end [sic] to be better readers, better writers tend to read more than poorer writers and better readers tend to produce more mature prose than poorer readers (Stotsky).

Here are Homstad and Thorson:

… better writers tend to be better readers, better writers read more than poorer writers, and better readers produce more syntactically mature writing than poorer readers.

So, now that those are on the table, let’s look at Stotsky’s actual words:

To summarize briefly, the correlational studies show almost consistently that better writers tend to be better readers (of their own writing as well as that of other reading material), that better writers tend to read more than poorer writers, and that better readers tend to produce more syntactically mature writing than poorer readers.

So, the question that I ask is: did plagiarism occur, and if so, who plagiarized whom and what kind of plagiarism was it? And, best question yet, did someone plagiarize someone who plagiarized someone else? Also, will I make my students figure it out? Probably, yes.

Jun 18

Teaching the Boston Celtics Way

I live outside of Portland, so I like the Blazers. And I really like them. It’s easy to be a Blazers fan, despite their struggles. But, if I had to pick a different team, not the local team, I’d have to go with the Boston Celtics. I like the Celtics, their creativity and grit and chemistry (some of this could be a confirmation bias with The Association providing the details that I can only see through my lens of Celtics love). I also like teaching, and I like to think about teaching. So, it’s pretty easy for the food processor of my head to mix together some Celtics love and a few teaching ideas. I think I need to start writing a book called Teaching the Boston Celtics Way. If I did, the first chapter would probably be about triggers and options…

Most teams have a primary “trigger.” A go-to play with a go-to playmaker. The sweet spot where they generate a significant chunk of their offense. For most of this season for the Blazers this should have been LaMarcus Aldridge getting an entry pass to the lower block. When they couldn’t make this happen for big stretches of the season, things fell apart and terrible things happened like Andre Miller shooting three pointers. For the Celtics, well, they have a lot of potential triggers. Rondo penetration. Garnett pick and roll or pick and pop. Ray Allen off a sequence of screens. Paul Pierce in a pick and roll situation. Even without their premier big man (really Danny Ainge? why?), they still have a lot to work with. But, right, in reality, these aren’t all triggers. Some of these things are options. Once your trigger fails, you go to your second, third and fourth options. As Kevin Arnovitz writes, great teams can convert on more than just their trigger (something that set the Mavs apart from their Blazers once Brandon Roy realized he was a human with weak knees again). And what really sets the Celtics apart (when things are going well for them, see 2010, 2008), is that they get into their offense quickly and have, ” a knack for creating and capitalizing on multiple options and triggers.” They get into their offense quickly, and then rattle through their options very quickly. This, this thought right here – getting into your offense, trigger and then multiple options – this is a metaphor for teaching.

Getting into your offense quickly: this is about transitions, not wasting class time, no dilly dallying on periphery stuff. Sit down and get to business like Rondo running the ball up the court. For a teacher, this means clear expectations for specific student action steps at the start of class. Students should know a routine or where to look for their instructions. Then… the trigger. What is the best way to get each individual student to demonstrate proficiency at the learning target. Do this thing. If it’s something different for each student, do it that way. If it doesn’t work (the ball doesn’t find the net) – and formative assessment shows you this, then you quickly cycle through your options. The key here is to be prepared with a lot of good options. Options in this metaphor are ways of reteaching or looking at a problem in a different way or finding a different way to allow a student to demonstrate proficiency.

For me, a favorite option is sticky note formative assessment: give each student a sticky note, have them respond to a statement related to the objective, have them put the sticky note on a continuum on the board showing where they fall between strongly agree and strongly disagree with the statement, then have the class discuss the range of acceptable answers. To quote a sometimes poet, “It is not the only or the easiest way to come to the truth. It is one way.”

This metaphor, Boston’s triggers and options, is really about maximizing class time and differentiating instruction. It takes a lot of work to have a range of options available, but it’s worth it. You don’t want to end up like Scott Brooks, deep in the playoffs, unable to write or call plays on the fly, and your main trigger going cold (Kevin Durant) and your other one fouling out (James Harden). For a good teacher, like a point guard or coach, it’s not just about having great initial lesson or play, it’s about having a sequence of options to fall back on when the initial trigger doesn’t convert.

Jun 03

This has something to do with teaching (pt.9)

Matt Frost comments on a thought from Alan Jacobs (by way of Tim Carmody):

Now, handing cigarettes to high school students might not be the best choice, but allowing for, encouraging, and structuring “directed fidgeting” sounds like the answer to a few problems in traditional classrooms (traditional = teacher giving direct instruction).

Jun 01

This has something to do with teaching: If You See Something, Skate Something. Rob Greco pointed this out, and it’s brilliant. I want a slightly modified one for the classroom, something along these lines: “If you see a possible learning opportunity, don’t keep it to yourself. Tell a friend…”