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Students' Funds of Knowledge and C.I.

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This past week, I made a funds of knowledge survey , using Google Forms, for all of my students to fill out. (I heavily borrowed the questions from this prezi !) I used the survey to get the students thinking about their own culture, their own traditions, and what makes them, well, them. We will be doing some deep dives into other cultures with what remains of the school year, so this was the opening to make comparisons between our own cultures and those that we will be studying. It was also an excellent way for me to gather some more background info about my students. One unexpected but interesting thing that I learned was that the students who do not do things with their families were also the least engaged students that I have in my classes. Food for thought as a parent, for sure! The next step to digging into students’ funds of knowledge was done by conducting a CI technique. CI is short for Comprehensible Input , which is a method of delivering students with und...
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Assessments.   Assessments and UDL. Oh boy.   This is the area that I find I am most struggling.   I am pretty old school when it comes to assessment.   Or at least I have been.   Ok, I’m evolving. At a very slow pace.   Like maybe a snail’s pace.   Is this a snail or a bunny?  A bunny snail? A pet!?!   When I first started teaching, it was all quizzes and tests for assessments.  Now that I’ve been teaching for 14 years, it’s all quizzes and tests.  Kidding!  I do pretty well in the category of formative assessments.  I am constantly checking in with homework, vocabulary quizzes, show of hands, sticky-note on the board, reflections and the like. Where I struggle is with summative assessments.   I’ve been writing killer tests for so long, I’ve got it down to a science.  There are good reasons for how my tests are written – they show higher-order thinking skills, they make kids show their understanding of t...
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Instructional Rounds...say what now?

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These last few weeks have been...interesting.  On the home front, my daughter decided that it would be super fun to catch the flu.  She made sure to do it directly after February vacation to have maximum impact on disrupting virtually everything.  She didn't stop there, though, she upped the ante by tacking on a robust round of pneumonia, just to keep life interesting.  * Side note - as I type this, my son is sitting crouched at my feet, banging a drum with a pencil.  I can't tell if he wants my attention!?!   Add to all of this the third nor'easter to come through in March and I feel as if I have spent so much time at home and so little time in school that I'm not even sure what I teach anymore!  * My son has moved on to drumming the Jumanji theme song when danger approaches...I'm feeling slightly menaced.     Being snowed in by Mother Nature, and sidelined with a sick kid, I decided the timing couldn't be better to ...
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Please check your ego at the door; UDL and student feedback

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Have you ever had that student who walks through the door and is so petrified of making a mistake because they don't want to look stupid?  I mean, we all went through middle school, so whether or not we have had that student, I'm sure at some point in our lives we were  that student.  We somehow need to get those students to feel comfortable enough to take risks and to be able to make mistakes in front of their peers and not feel the need to immediately melt through the floor.  How do we do that?  Isn't that the million dollar question?      Where'd he go? I don't think that there is one correct answer. Clearly we need to build relationships with our students. Relationships with students in many ways are like a partnership. And partnerships work best when there is feedback coming from both directions.  I think that all too often we give and give and give feedback to students, but don't take enough time to listen to what they have...
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