Dear Future Self

Dear Future Self,

I wrote some notes to you on my lesson plans from this week but you will have no idea what they mean. They were hurried and cryptic. When you try to teach this lesson next year, you will struggle to remember what you did with this lesson.

Did we read this independently or out loud? What reading strategy did we do? How did it work out? Did you have to change it midway through 2nd period? Did they learn it well? Did you have a good processing activity?

Future Self, I apologize for just tucking this reading in a folder with the a sticky note that has 3 words on it. I realize that you are now having to re-create this lesson and that you can’t tell how well or how much the kids learned the last time you did it.

I apologize for not fixing the typos or unclear directions on this handout. I apologize for not making a note about the awesome lesson fix I discovered during 4th period that took the lesson from “ok” to “awesome”.

Dear Future Self, have fun recreating this lesson and doing it Groundhog Day Style -- making the same mistakes as before.

Sorry ‘bout that!  Good luck!

-Love, Me-From-The-Past

* * * * * *

I don’t know about you all, but I am not always the best supporter of Future Me. Future Me would be a lot happier if I ate healthier, exercised more, saved more money, didn’t procrastinate, cleaned out the fridge more often, and flossed more regularly.

One of the ways I can help out Future Me is to make notes about how lessons went this year, so I have something to go off for next year!

There’s nothing worse than being halfway through a lesson and suddenly remembering that it bombed last year. Now what do we do?

It sure helps to reflect in writing so you can save your Future Self some hassle.

There are several ideas about how to do this.

1. If you type your lesson plans, go back into that document and highlight stuff that went well and strikethrough things that went poorly. Or, type in your thoughts into another column or box so you can see it next year. Then, you have to get in the habit of looking at last year’s lessons when your Future Self writes the new ones.
2. You can keep a document to yourself in each folder (digital or IRL) of a unit and jot down your thoughts as you go through the unit.
3. If you hand-write your lessons, go back and add another piece of paper or a couple sticky notes. Put your handouts and thoughts in the same folder to reference next year.
4. Grab a notebook or calender and keep it by your desk (or better yet, somehow keep it by your door). Then, as you stand at your door between classes, you can multitask and jot down a few thoughts under the date.

Now -- here’s the hard part!

Making sure your Future Self can understand the notes you write!

Make sure you don’t assume that you will remember the context 52 weeks from now. Make that context explicit.  Try some of these ideas:

• Don’t call it ”the  video”. Make sure to note what video you used.and what you had the kids do with it . Copy the actual link and the length of the video.
• Instead of saying “read section and did questions”, tell your Future Self that you read the section out loud and that the kids answered #1-3, 5, and 8 and that Question #8 was your formative assessment for the day.
• If you found a discussion question or a turn and talk prompt particularly great, make sure to write that down!

I know that different teachers write lesson plans differently -- but it might be what we write AFTER we teach the lesson that might be more valuable to us next year.

How do you tell your Future Self about how your lessons went? Do you do it at all? How can you streamline your post-lesson notes to make your Future Self more awesome?

As always, I love to hear! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

The Connection Is Made

It’s getting down to the end. We have less than six weeks of school left (!!). The weather is  gorgeous. The kids have Spring Fever. The “senioritis” is trickling down to junioritis, freshmanitis, eighthgradeitis, even sixthgradeitis! It’s intermittently testing season and field trip season and schedules are all funky and out of whack.

How on earth do we keep any continuity or connections between topics and lessons from one day to the next?  

Especially when we don’t see one group of kids until Thursday because of testing/field trip/special events?

As usual, my magic wand is in the shop. And my magic bullets are in the mail.  

But it definitely wouldn’t hurt to be more intentional in having kids make connections.

Here are two ideas that you can work in, regardless of how frequently -- or infrequently -- you see your kids this month.

1. 
   Clifhangers: How do we remember the important points of Game of Thrones or whatever TV show we haven’t seen in a while? The shows usually helps us out by leaving us with a cliffhanger at the end of one episode.

Cliffhangers are great for that last one-minute of class when you don’t  have time to start something else. Just throw out a fairly interesting question from tomorrow’s lesson and remind kids to “stay tuned” to find out.

• What are some of the most important Supreme Court cases of all time?
• What is Lincoln going to do when states start seceding?
• How can the Roman Republic stay a republic when it adds all this new territory?
• How smoothly do you think these former colonies are going to move into independence?
• What different areas are going to outwardly fight against integration -- and which areas are going to fight passively?

It’s ok that they don’t have the answers. They’re NOT SUPPOSED TO! A cliffhanger is there to make them curious about the next lesson. It’s supposed to engage their brains a little after your class is over.

We know it’s not likely that they will ponder that question all night and lose sleep over it. But even if it crosses SOME of their minds once or twice, then their brains are “primed” and ready to connect new content to the old content.

Curiosity is a powerful force for engagement and learning. And it doesn’t require a lot of prep to add in.

2. Previously On: The next way to help kids is to regularly ask  kids what they remembered from yesterday’s lesson (or the previous time’s lesson) -- ask as bellwork or during the lesson intro.

There are several ways to do this.

• You can just flat out ask -- “what did you remember from yesterday’s lesson?”
• You can toss out a couple of terms from yesterday and ask what they have to do with the main topic.
• You can ask a review question about the previous lesson, test-style.
• You can ask kids to turn and talk about what they know or remember about the previous lesson’s topic.

3. Connections: Put a couple of terms from recent lessons on the board. Then ask kids to use a certain amount of them (6? 10?) on their paper -- with ARROWS showing how they are connected.

This helps kids explore the connections between topics which helps build schema and solidifies it all in their heads.

It requires the kids to not only know the content, but know and understand how each goes with another.

How can we help kids make connections within and between content? How can we help them keep some continuity when our schedules get crazy? How can we start the review process a little bit at a time?

Help kids make connections. Try it!

And let me know how it goes! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy

9 Ways to Use Music in the Social Studies Classroom

If you’ve been to any Equity training in the past few years, you have probably heard of the “6 Ms”. One  of my favorite “M”s stands for “music”.

It might be because I was a wedding DJ (and middle school dance DJ!). But I really love using music!

But if you’re like me, using music can sometimes be daunting. I mean, do I choose cool, current music that I’m not familiar with because I’m not 14 anymore? Or do I choose my old, familiar, grown-up music that the kids might hate? What about bad words? What if the music gets the kids rowdier than I want? What’s the point of using music anyway?

Why should I try?

Music connects with kids (heck, with ALL people), but it’s particularly good for engaging kids who might not be otherwise engaged. It helps kids to perk up and pay attention. It might reach someone who’s hard to reach. It might teach content better than some other ways.

Here are NINE ideas for using music in your classroom -- and I have STOLEN all NINE of these from real classrooms around our district.

1. Play music without words: If you don’t want to worry about bad words -- or worse, slang that you don’t even KNOW is bad -- try listening to instrumental versions of popular music! You can literally search “instrumental versions of popular songs 2019”  on youtube and play it on -- winning both the battle against bad words and the battle for music “acceptable” to your kids!
2. Play music during independent or collaborative work time: Some kids learn better with background noise. So play music quietly when they are doing only independent or collaborative work so that they can concentrate.
3. Use music to actually teach: Youtube is a great (and terrible) invention. One of the ways we can incorporate music FOR learning is to use the brilliance of other teachers online. Try “Too Late to Apologize”  or (my favorite) Mr. Betts or the (world) Historyteachers or (ancient history) Mr. Nicky  or Schoolhouse Rock or School Yard Rap or Flocabulary or one of a million parodies.
4. Have kids make their own songs/rhymes/raps: Assign kids the option of making a  song/rhyme/rap about the topic you’re learning about in class. There’s nothing better than a student project where they crack themselves up because of their fabulous wordsmithing and their use of their FAVORITE songs!
5. Hear actual historical music: Listen to “We Shall Overcome” or “Strange Fruit” when you talk about the Civil Rights Movement. My high school World History teacher made our whole class of 15 year-olds stand up and sing “Over There”, the WWI fight song.Teach protest songs
6. Use Music as a Primary Source: Have kids analyze the lyrics or respond in writing to a song. Have them look at music as another type of primary source.
7. Use Pop Culture:  Of course, Hamilton has a million teaching points. But so do the Animaniacs. And the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
8. Play Music During Transitions:  Try playing music for the one or two minutes you’re giving your students to move from one activity to another. When they put away their bellwork notebooks and put their desks in groups -- play some music. When they are moving from station to station -- play some music. When they’re walking into the room -- play some music.
9. Use music to learn about historical events: Ask kids what song would be the theme song to a historical figure, or what song best represents an events. Can they think of a song that would describe an era or an invention? Kids know a lot more songs than we do -- let’s use that to connect with content!

Do you have any MORE ideas on ways to teach using music? Email me! I love to HEAR (get it? hear?!?!) about what you do with music in your class!

Rock on!

-Tracy

You Down With OPV?

You down with OPP (Yeah you know me)

You down with OPP (Yeah you know me)

You down with OPP (Yeah you know me)

Who's down with OPP? (Every last homie)

Large chunks of the “OPP” song (by Naughty by Nature, 1991)  are pretty inappropriate for me to send out through work email.    So, don’t think about those parts and we’re all good.

And don’t listen to it on your work computer or with students around. Just saying!

Instead of “OPP”, we’re going to talk about “OPV”

Like Naughty by Nature has said, “O is for Other, P is for People”

The last “V”, well, that’s not so simple.

I won't get into that, I'll do it...uh...sorta properly.

Ok, ok, enough silliness. This IS really a strategy and it IS really called OPV. O= Other; P= People; V=Views.

Our benchmarks ask us to look at multiple perspectives frequently -- particularly with historically underrepresented groups. We even have a benchmark about seeing history through the eyes of the people who lived it.

We also have a current societal problem where people live in echo chambers where they don’t actually experience opposing viewpoints in their social circles -- or if they do, the common response is to ridicule and mock the other side.

So how can we help kids learn to examine Other People’s View? I’m down with OPV (I know i sound old. I can live with that)

OPP, how can I explain it? I'll take you frame by frame it.

This is a hook activity that’s intended to be an introduction to a lesson and should take less than 10 minutes. Other People’s View (OPV) is from CoRT Thinking Tools , an exploration tool to broaden perception. It’s a very important part of thinking to be able to see the different points of view of other people -- not just your own. The OPV helps kids to broaden their (our?) overall thinking about a situation.. ​​​

Here’s how to do it:

•Step 1: Display a photograph (or painting or another visual stimulus)  without giving background information. Have students analyze the photograph. ​​​

•Step 2: In each of the thought bubbles have students individually write what they think the people/animals/objects in the image may be saying, thinking or representing. This step is intended to help students think about different points of view.​​​

•Step 3: Have students share and compare the comments they wrote in the thought bubbles with a partner or in groups. ​​​

•Step 4: Debrief whole class making connections to related concepts and establishing historical context.​​​

The example here shows a famous photo of police dogs and a Civil Rights demonstrator in Birmingham in 1963.  How can students attempt to understand viewpoints of the the demonstrator, the bystanders, the police, --even the dog?  \

How can we get use this tool to get students to look at multiple viewpoints?

We can try this with photographs, of course. But political cartoons and paintings work, too. Here’s a Civil War cartoon about Lincoln. The caption (which may be too small here for you to read), says “Lincoln’s Last Warning: ‘Now, if you don’t come down, I’ll cut the Tree from under you’”.     

This is an easy strategy to set up! Just open a word document, paste the image you want in the center (leaving big margins) and insert the speech-bubbles.

If you don’t know where to find those, go into Word, under “insert” click “shapes”. At the bottom should be several versions of “callouts”. Choose one and resize and flip as needed.

That’s it.

Say OPV I like to say with pride

Now when you do it, do it well and make sure that it counts

You're not down with a discount

You’re down with OPV (Yeah, you know me!)

Don’t forget to have your kids share their thought bubbles together to encourage deeper conversation. It doesn’t have to take long and it encourages creative thinking and multiple viewpoints!

Well if you do, that's OPP and you're now down with it

But if you’re not, here's your membership

You’re down with OPV.

Yeah? You know me?

Email me! Tell me how OPV goes!

-Tracy