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Save The Date! You Can See/Hear My Co-Author, Katie Hull Sypnieski, Speak On July 10th About Teaching ELLs
My friend and co-author Katie Hull Sypnieski is speaking about teaching ELLs at the HS English Teacher Summit, sponsored by English Teacher Vault, on July 10th. I believe you’ll learn the exact time of her presentation after you register for free. You can watch all the presentations happening there for free on the days they air – you need to pay a registration fee if you want to view it on demand. Katie does very few of these kinds of presentations, so I’d encourage you to check it out!      A Look Back: My Growth Mindset Lessons Usually Go Well, But What I Did Today Was The Best Yet (Student Hand-Outs Included)For the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2017.
The one I did today, though, was probably the best one yet. Our school emphasizes Social Emotional Learning, and a growth mindset is our focus for September. A number of us are responsible for giving formal SEL lessons to our classes, while other teachers are provided with professional development about how to support it in their classes. Today, I did the lesson with my English Language Learner United States History class. Truth-be-told, I was probably a bit more motivated than usual to do something new and creative for two reasons – one, because, even though the lesson I had done for the past two years was a good one, I a bit tired of it and, two, members of the California State Board of Education were coming in to observe it. Here’s what I did: I first began by providing a definition of a growth mindset. I asked students what “grow” meant, and then what “mind” meant. I continues by explaining it meant to grow our mind by looking at problems as just another thing to get through, and not to feel stopped by them – they were opportunities to “grow our mind.” I then showed each of these video clips (which I’ve used in prior lessons). After each one, I had student think for a moment about what the video clip might be saying about what a growth mindset meant. Students shared with a partner, and then I called on students to share with the entire class. Below the clips, I’ve included a picture of the easel paper showing what students came up with…. 
I then distributed, and read aloud, these three stories showing a growth mindset. I explained that as I read them, students should be thinking of their own examples since they would be writing them next. You can download it here. GROWTH MINDSET STORIES-19tapjv
Next, I gave students this writing frame (you can download it here). I asked them to think about what we wrote on the easel paper about the elements of a growth mindset, and try to remember a time when they acted like that. We went through each section one-at-a-time, and then students copied them down into a paragraph. Everyone was very engaged.
Almost everyone finished their story (many, though not all, were about learning English). Tomorrow, students will be sharing them with each other and, eventually, posting them on our class blog. The sharing should be a good community-building experience. In addition, we now have a common growth mindset vocabulary which enables me to not have to say, “Jose, please put your head up.” Instead, I will be able to say, “Jose, remember our growth mindset lesson?” That should help students, and will be much more energizing for me, too!  Ed Tech Digest
Ten years ago, in another somewhat futile attempt to reduce the backlog of resources I want to share, I began this occasional “Ed Tech Digest” post where I share three or four links I think are particularly useful and related to…ed tech, including some Web 2.0 apps. You might also be interested in checking out all my edtech resources. Here are this week’s choices: Ally Class lets you create online interactive class activities. It seems to me like a slimmed down Quizizz/Wayground, and it’s free. NewsletterLab looks like it has potential for email newsletters. I’m adding it to The Best Applications For Creating Free Email Newsletters. Banning Social Media is from The NY Times.
 A Look Back: Now This Is A Student Goal-Setting Strategy That May Actually WorkFor the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2017.
I posted “Everyone Is A Teacher” Is A New Engagement Strategy I’m Using & It Seems To Be Working earlier this week, and it was – rightfully, I think 🙂 – a very popular post. In it, I discussed how I was trying to build a classroom culture in my Beginner ELL class where everyone would feel they had a responsibility to be a teacher. It’s early, but has gone very well, and some of my colleagues have already begun to replicate it in their classes. On Friday, I tried a next step to the strategy. I created a simple form listing the actions the class had determined they could do as “teachers” and had them glue it in their notebook. You can download it here. I explained that each Friday, they would grade themselves on how they had done in that area during the previous week, but that I would not look at it. I would ask that they would share their grades with a partner of their choice and also identify one – just one – area they wanted to improve on in the coming week. I would ask that they share that goal with the entire class. Students approached it eagerly. Then one student came up to me and said she wanted to show me her grades. They were accurate, and also not very good. I publicly praised her for her honesty and then everybody wanted to show me their grades. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was brutally honest with themselves. Here are a couple of examples:
Students liked sharing with a partner, and then everybody picked an area for improvement. And just about every student picked the area that I would have chosen for them! I have tried tons of different goal-setting strategies over the years (see Best Posts On Students Setting Goals) with varying levels of success and failure. This one might end up being one of the more successful ones.  No Sh_T Sherlock, Another Study Finds That Just Because Your Students Do Well At Advantaged School Doesn’t Mean You’ll Have The Same Success At A Low-Income One
Ah, this recent study brought back memories of a Sacramento Bee editorial that suggested that since the one district high school that required high-grades and test-scores to enter had high achievement measurements, then those educators could show the rest of us what we were doing wrong (I previously wrote about that at New Study Reaffirms What Most Teachers Know – Student Test Scores Don’t Provide Accurate Assessment Of Schools). This recent study, Evidence from the Random Assignment of Transfer Incentives, found that teachers who received a $20,000 bonus to transfer from high-achieving schools to lower-achieving ones weren’t really able to get the same results from their students. Huh. Who would have thought? I’m adding this info to The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher (& Outside Factors) Have On Student Achievement. Addendum: Matt Barnum has written a good summary of the study. And here’s a good summary of the study:
The 74 also has a summary: Why Even Top Teachers May Struggle in Low-Performing Schools And the study’s authors have also compiled a summary.
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