Kagan Cooperative Learning Institute Part 1

Oh my was this some good PD!!  You may have read my earlier post on the cooperative learning workshop that I attended last year.  I really liked most of what I learned, and have integrated some of it into my teaching.  BUT now I am ready to jump in.  This workshop was conducted by the Kagan company and our facilitator, Jeff, was incredible.  He did a great job of integrating cooperative learning into his presentation, which made it really easy to see where the different CL structures could fit.  Through the course of the workshop, I saw where I was falling down with CL.  I will get into some of the new structures I learned in my next post, but before I get to that, here is a list of ways to make the most of CL in your classroom:

1.  All day, erry day!  Cooperative learning is not just a lesson you plan for one day, it is a lifeblood that should run through everything you do.  Jeff recommended to build in some type of CL structure or brain break every 5 minutes or so!  Basically, you want to break what would be a 20 minute leasson into four 5 minute sets.  I plan to stop notes every so often and use a CL structure for processing.  I am thinking about going over lab instructions with a CL structure.  I even plan to fill time at the end of class with CL structures!  You can pull them out at the spur of the moment for many different purposes.
2.  Pretty much every question you ask can be made more effective with CL.  I do a "Do Now" question at the beginning of every class.  I was having so much trouble getting participation during do nows toward the end of last semester and was getting soooo frustrated!  I am thinking of all of the times I could have used a CL structure to get so much more engagement.  If you find yourself standing in front of a room of crickets OR you have the same student answering every time, that is the perfect time to use a CL structure.
3.  They should be working hard, you should not be!  The structures should be such that the work load is on them.  CL structures should make your life easier, not harder.  You should try to set them up so they are self sustaining and require no additional input from you.
4.  Fun-first and frequent.  This is what Jeff called F^3.   Every structure should start with a fun brain break or team building type question.  Then, use the structure for what you really want them to think about.  He showed us some games to play with students to get the blood pumping and get them up and moving.  I feel like he gave us "permission" to have fun with our students.  A lot of times we think doing these kinds of things are a waste of time, but he really hit home how important it is for engagement.
5.  Cooperative learning should be used to build a sense of community and accountability in your classroom.  Use it to teach social skills and set it up in a true CL style so that no students have an opportunity to opt-out; more on this in the next post.
6.  Procedures should not be punished or praised, but rehearsed.  If students aren't doing it the way you want them to, stop them and rehearse, then continue.  Don't get on their case about doing it wrong, just show them what they ought to be doing instead.
7.  Have an attention getting signal.  No REALLY have one and USE IT.  I am guilty of starting the year with, "okay now when I want your attention I'm going to raise my hand blah blah blah..." but within a few weeks I have fallen back into repeating "may I have your attention please" over and over (a student once played "The Real Slim Shady" in my class because they said it always made them think of me).  Jeff talked about the fact that it is not about compliance (you don't necessarily have to wait until every single hand is up) but refocusing attention.  So, when you have everyone's attention again, go ahead and proceed.  He used the phrase "Freeze please" which I liked because it is so short (much easier and faster to say than my old standard!)
8.  Think time.  Always always ALWAYS give students time to think before they have to share.  Jeff recommended 10 s.  I actually have been doing pretty well at integrating this into my teaching, I believe I learned about it at either my CL or culturally responsive teaching training last summer.  Basically, never put a student on the spot or catch them off guard on purpose.  They need to feel a sense of safety in your classroom if they are going to (willingly) participate.

One of the best parts of this workshop was getting to work with a variety of teachers around the district.  Jeff's procedures definitely helped foster a sense of community in us.  I got to work with teachers that I haven't seen since last summer (Amy from Global Ed!) and I met some teachers that I otherwise would probably never have the chance to meet.  If it happened with us, it will happen with our students too.  I had discussions with other teachers about how this mixing via CL or any other mechanism should be a part of every PD we do.  Within my own building I don't know many of the teachers.  We stay in our little bubbles.  Even we as adults are missing some of the social skills that are so important to make life, work, and learning more rewarding!

Jeff had so many great quotes and ideas, and modeled so many awesome teaching strategies.  I will never be able to remember them all.  I took so many notes at this workshop! Here are a few good ones (note, I am paraphrasing on pretty much all of these):

• "How are you smart today?"
• "We use our words and actions to lift each other up, not knock each other down"
• "Successful people work with a person even on days they don't like them"
• "He who aims at nothing hits it every time" (importance of defining a target for students--essentially what they should be doing at any given time)
• "Verbalization increases internalization"
• "What is the reason that shouldn't have occurred?" (Instead of "What were you thinking?" because well, they weren't)
• "Vacation precedes negative consequences" (for a student who needs a "vacation" from their group--or really, when the group needs a vacation from that student!)
• "When my kids mess up, I don't send them to the neighbor's house, we work through it together"
• "My job is to put a fence around you--as a result of your choices and actions, I can make it bigger or smaller.  Our goal is for it to grow--because I want you to grow."
• "Recovery is as important as the exercise"
• "Greet-praise-part"  (greet your partner, praise them, leave them with parting words)
• "Feedback should be both immediate and specific to be effective"
• "Greet each other in a way that makes them proud and happy to be here today"

There are so many others I can't remember but several of these were ones I want to use in class so I wanted to make sure to record all of them that I could!  One thing that I picked up on that he modeled was teaching while we were standing.  So, we would do a structure that left us standing up.  Before having us return to our seats, he would usually talk for a bit (often for a tad too long, really) but it always felt like what he was saying was very important.  I am hoping to do a little of this.  He also suggested giving students a target for returning back to their seats like--high five 5 people as you come back to your seat or think of 5 polygons as you come back to your seat (he was a math teacher, but you get the idea!).  This gives them more of a sense of purpose, which he says will help them get back to their seat without as much dilly dallying.

These are some of the main ideas and take-aways from the Cooperative Learning workshop.  In the next post, I will cover CL structures, brain breaks, and strategies/techniques for integrating CL into the classroom.

Professional Learning Communities Institute 2015

This was the first workshop I attended this summer after a whopping 4 day break!  It was structured in a way that included two guest speakers via video conference and time to discuss within our school groups.  The speakers were first Ken Williams and then the DuFours (Richard and Rebecca).  The discussion time within our school groups was incredibly valuable.  I guess I'll start by going a little bit into what these PLC's are for those of you who have not adopted them in your schools.  The way that PLC's are defined in my school are small collaborative groups of teachers that share common goals.  Time is set aside for us to work together within a very specific framework.  The framework involves identifying shared targets among a group of teachers (in my case, freshman science), creating common assessments, collecting performance data, and using interventions to help when students are not mastering the targets.

In theory, PLCs sound great.  In practice, PLCs are very frustrating.  All we really want as teachers is to have time to collaborate by sharing ideas for teaching.  When you do run a PLC the "right" way, there really isn't much time for that.  There seems to be a consensus among most teachers I encounter that PLC time is not enough to accomplish what we are tasked with and a lot of times we feel like we are just spinning our wheels and have no idea what we are doing.  It tends to feel like a waste of time.  I know that all of this will get better as we figure out the way it works and get into a groove.  And the PLC I work in is getting closer.

The timing of this workshop was perfect as my PLC is planning to meet just next week to talk about the first semester of science that we all teach.  And I did get some useful tidbits from the guest speakers.  The principles I am outlining here I feel will go a long way to help mitigate some of our frustrating road blocks.

1.  Your targets should be non-negotiable.  Your PLC should agree on shared standards that are essential.  In other words, what do the students need in order to be successful--in the next unit, the next class, their future?  This was reinforcing the idea that we have been struggling with that there should only be a handful of targets that your PLC is assessing. We have bogged ourselves down with way too many targets and it is just overwhelming.
2.  The bar should be the same for all.  No really, ALL students.  When setting standards, you are expecting all students to meet or exceed the bar.  This hit home with me because I teach classes with a lot of the struggling students.  I need to be thinking about what they absolutely need to get out of the class and we cannot write targets that can't apply to all students.  That doesn't mean we should teach less or teach down, but we shouldn't expect every student to accomplish work at the highest possible level (though they should be working at their highest possible level).  Over the last year, I have come to the realization that a good portion of what we do in class could be classified as an "expert" level if you are talking about a standards-based model.  This material should be the enrichment for the students who meet the bar of mastering all of the essentials, but not expected out of students who are still struggling to reach the bar.
3.  If you can get your stuff done with or without the people in your group, you are not a team.  If your group members are essential to your success, however, you are a team.  You need to find a shared goal that is so important and impactful that you cannot accomplish it without all of your team members working together.  For example, all of our students will learn these essential targets.  To ensure that happens, we will cover material in this time frame, test at these specific times, review the data on this day and work together to implement interventions.
4.  Now about those interventions, no single teacher can possibly have all of the ability and expertise to re-mediate and accelerate all while continuing at to move forward at still another pace with everyone else within the confines of their own classroom, nor should they be expected to.  This was probably the most important thing I heard all day.  The DuFours kept reiterating that there needs to be a school-wide systemic change in order for the PLC cycle to work.  They emphasized that interventions should take place outside of the classroom.  This was such a novel idea, and I think we were all a bit taken aback by the notion.  It is completely overwhelming to figure out how to handle interventions in the classroom.  I am extremely lucky to have a few sections of class that are co-taught with a special education teacher, so interventions are a bit easier to integrate.  But, I absolutely could not do it effectively otherwise.  Some students see me outside of class for help but really that is not enough either.  The DuFours say that there needs to be specific time set aside during the normal school schedule specifically for students who require interventions.  Not during your personal class schedule, that is within the school wide schedule.  And without that, interventions will not be effective.

After this workshop, I feel a little bit better about the idea of working with the PLC on Monday.  If we can figure out our non-negotiable targets, I think the daunting task of collecting and analyzing data will be much simpler and we will hopefully have less to argue about! (*fingers crossed*)