"Practice Compassion"

In the past twenty-four hours I have felt hopeless and also filled with hope.

Like so many others around the world, I am grieving with Claire Davis' family and friends in the all-too-familiar report of an innocent child who has died at the hands of another child in school.  A friend posted on Facebook with the news of Claire's passing, "In the words of Bob Dylan: 'how many deaths will it take, til we know that too many people have died?' Something really needs to change..." I couldn't agree more.  And I tried to reply to her Facebook post, but I couldn't.  I had no words. Claire's death is too devastating. It's too unnecessary. And it's all-too familiar.

Columbine happened my first year as a classroom teacher. I remember weeping and watching the news coverage blanketing every channel on the television in Colorado.  I remember calling my mentor the night it happened and asking, "What should I do tomorrow? How do we talk about it?  What is the right was to handle this?"   There were no answers then.  There seem to be fewer answers now.

"Practice compassion," is my favorite quote by the Dalai Lama.

The full quote is, "If you want to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want others to be happy, practice compassion."  I always just remember the two words, "Practice compassion."

I love these words because they suggest compassion is at least part skill.  Compassion needs to be practiced to improve.  Compassion requires action. And that means everyone is capable of compassion with practice.  Everyone.   

As an educator, I appreciate practicing a skill to improve.  Times tables need to be practiced and applied to problem solving. Letter sounds need to be practiced and applied to reading words.  Compassion needs to be practiced and applied to loving others. 

As an educator, I know abstract concepts are best taught through concrete means. 

So I offer two ideas...


Teach kindness concretely.  

I've been told bullying is easier for children to understand than peace. It does not have to be. Instead of a giant red-lined circle that reads, "No Bullying," hang up a kindness wreath with lots of ribbon. For every kind deed a child sees or does, let her/him tie a ribbon on the wreath. 

Make kindness tangible. 

No one is ostracized when being taught to practice peace.  Everyone may participate.


No one is alienated when acts of kindness are given attention. Every kind acts earns attention.

Kids also relate to kids.  I have witnessed the most inspiring conversations about peace after sharing Heartsong poetry by Mattie J.T. Stepanek.  Kick off a unit of study or an at-home conversation with Mattie's poetry.  His message of peace will transcend the ages.

  



Model giving.

Model giving and involve your children in the action.  

Bring food to a food pantry.  Hand a bag to your child a bag to carry inside.

Deliver a meal to a family in need.  Let your child knock on the door.

Adopt a child or family for holiday gifts go shopping.  Let your child choose the presents. 

Volunteer with your children.

At this time last year, I was working as an education director at a small nonprofit in central Florida.  There, I met a number of notable people who will stay in my heart forever.  One of those people was a grandparent volunteer who was also a pastor.  When he found out I was leaving because the late hours were cutting too much into time with my children, we discussed parenting.  What he said will always stay with me...  "You have to trust what you put in them, " he said in reference to raising children and sending them out into the world. "You have to trust what you put in them."

I remember walking alongside my mother with food in hand for a Thanksgiving dinner and delivering the meal as a part of Meals on Wheels when I was a child.  It made an impact and it is my greatest hope to inspire the same through action.

And last night, I found Ofelia wrapping up a piece of her artwork. I asked whom it was for and she quickly replied, "Someone special." The distinct package is under the tree labeled, "To Mom. Love, Ofelia." 

She just made my Christmas.

Let's all practice. 

A SensAble Learning Center

I envision opening center called SensAble Learning in or around Erie, Colorado. 

In the morning and early afternoon, SensAble Learning will be a place for parents and children who are not yet in school and parents choosing to homeschool.

The space will be set up in Montessori-inspired fashion with a twist.  Currently, I see a number-sense area, a life-skills corner, a literacy zone, an art explosion, a geography place, a puzzle corner, a science space,  and a garden.  Every zone will be an effort to make abstract concepts tangible through hand-on exploration.   A parent will be encouraged to follow his/her child's interest, curiosity and zest for learning throughout the center instead of leading the child through the activities.  

Plus, I'll teach Souns®and Rhymes classes at least once a week.

Later in the afternoon, SensAble Learning will welcome school-age children for tutoring and enrichment.

After school, the center will transition to an enrichment and tutoring space.  Many children are in schools dependent upon understanding based on rote work rather than hands-on experiences and exploration.  Creative expression and exploration will lead the way. SensAble Learning will bridge the learning divide for many children.  Struggling readers in intermediate grades who never learned the alphabetic principle necessary for reading will be taught explicitly. Students who think they are bad at math because number sense was never established will learn they are capable after learning the connections of basic mathematical operations.  

SensAble Learning will serve special needs students, gifted students, students in need of extra help, students in need of more challenge, etc.  SensAble Learning knows every child is exceptional.

In the evenings, SensAble Learning will become a space for teachers.

At night, once or twice a week, SensAble Learning will be a space for teachers to come and learn various methods to make learning more hands-on, concrete and impactful.  It will be a space honoring a variety of approaches.  For example, Montessori veterans will be welcomed to teach traditionally-trained educators new approaches for credit that counts for teacher certification renewal.

Having a space lingers in my mind.  In November, 2013, we moved to the small town of Erie, Colorado.  It is a town filled with  young families, and I see this idea thriving here.  So, I'm throwing my idea out into the universe and we'll see where it goes...  

About Your Kindergartner's Word List

A successful journey to literacy begins with incremental, concrete-sequential steps.  

Establishing the alphabetic principle is the most critical initial step to success in literacy.  The alphabetic principle includes phonemic and phonological awareness.  Don't take my word for it.  Check out what the National Reading Panel has to say. We are entering the beginning of a paradigm shift in our society's approach to early literacy, and this shift will result in a more literate society.  In the meantime, I realize paradigms do not shift overnight.  The purpose of this blog is to assist in building bridges.

If your kindergarten student brings home a word list (sight words, instant words, etc.), and he/she is supposed to learn the words on the list over the year, here is some advice.  My two cents are the result of years of reading, research, observations of emerging readers, teaching my own children and aha moments working to intervene with older, struggling readers.   

In the forefront of your mind, remember to keep it simple with the right information first, honoring your child's analytic skills every step of the way.

1) Wait to begin work with instant words/sight words until your child mastered learning letter sounds.  The Souns Tracking Sheet is available for use.

2) As a child learns more and more letter sounds, she is ready to practice building (encoding) C-V-C (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words.  What is a C-V-C word?  You can practice C-V-C words at home with lower-case letter refrigerator magnets and a cookie sheet. 

3)  If your child practices building enough C-V-C words, your child will read decodable C-V-C words.  My daughter read her first word in the back seat of the car off of a Macy's advertisement!  Watch the video!

4) Once your child is comfortable encoding and decoding C-V-C words,  you may grab that list.  Remember,  practice tricky words/ puzzle words/ sight words in context and not on flashcards.  Context is key!

Here is how I am working with the kindergarten word list in our home.

I successfully dodged these lists for the past two years with my older daughter in preschool and kindergarten.  At the start of first grade, she reads brilliantly and well above grade-level expectations.  Unfortunately,  I am not successfully dodging these words with my younger daughter who is insistent on practicing.  Hence, I am writing this blog for other parents.

My daughter brought home the words pictured below to practice.  The words lack a direct, meaningful context.  Many of them are easily decodable: see, can, like and look. The list she is expected to know is a mix of decodable and puzzle words.   I honor her intellect and analytic skills, and I never ask her to look and remember.  I ask her to look at the sounds to see if she can figure it out.  

Instead of practicing the words in isolation, I wrote simple sentence with lots of easy-to-decode words which created meaning. Again, honor your child's intellect and allow her to say each sound /c/ /a/ /n/ and put it together to read, "can."  Every small victory is a flying leap on the path to literacy.  If she is unable to figure out the word, I help.  For instance, in "my," she can identify the /m/ and I help with the rest.   Then, we follow the reading of the word with the reading of a simple sentence. 

                                                             

     

We practice by reading one word and then reading the sentence with the word in context.  We do not memorize words.  We read them.

Why? 

Diane McGuinness writes in Early Reading Instruction, “... we know that time spent memorizing sight-words can cause a negative outcome by promoting a strategy of ‘whole word guessing.’ This is where children decode the first letter phonetically and guess the rest  of the word based on length and shape. This strategy is highly predictive of reading failure.” (pp. 114- 115)

I confirmed McGuinness'  finding in my research, but I have an expanded hypothesis about why it is happening.  Kids do not just misread these words guessing using the first letter. Older struggling readers misread words that look nothing alike. Some look similar in structure.  Others do not.   Brains are powerful pattern decoders.  Evidence that the brain is a pattern decoder is described on page 72 of Pinker’s work, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language.  I suspect if the only pattern the brain finds between words is the pattern of flipping flash cards, those words become interchangeable in the mind's eye.  Children have very clever brains!   Now, think of the meaning difference between reading "A" vs."He"  or "there" vs. "his."  These errors become well-hidden comprehension issues in older grades.  See the list of words read incorrectly by children in camp last summer. 

I realize some schools will not let a child "pass" kindergarten until she knows X out of 100 words.  If this is what you are facing, only begin once sounds are known, mastered and applied.  Then, always  practice tricky words/ puzzle words/ sight words in context and never on flashcards.  

This is not an isolated problem with a teacher or a school.  It is a systemic problem.  I won't write yet about the mass confusion surrounding the term "sight words" except to say, most word lists floating around have plenty of decodable words that are not "sight words."

I wish I could go back to my time in the classroom with the understanding I gained after meeting Brenda Erickson, my mentor and veteran Montessori practitioner.  Since time travel is not a current option, I will offer my new insight with any parent or teacher who desires to learn. 

A New Way to Write a Rubric

Rubrics are wonderful and relatively new to classroom practice. If you are not an educator, a rubric is like a performance evaluation you receive on the job.  It makes a somewhat abstract scoring principle more tangible.

Rubrics are not at all appropriate for every classroom assessment.  If you are looking to figure out if a child knows and understands his/her times tables or letter sounds, stick to checklists, observations and anecdotes.  However,  if you want to put a score a project-based learning activity or culmination of a unit of study that students have put their hearts into for weeks, a rubric is the way to go.

Because rubrics are time-consuming and subjective, involving the students in the process of creating one makes the process more meaningful, increasing the depths of understanding and expectations, allowing for better results.

Co-creating a rubric with students is by no means a new idea, but I just had an idea for adding a new twist to co-creating a rubric.  

When I co-wrote a rubric with a class,  I begin with the standard as the  "3- Meeting Expectations."   (The Common Core State Standards are the minimal student expectations adopted by the majority of the United States addressing literacy and math outcomes and serve as the base expectations.) Sometimes, it was necessary to make the language a little more kid-friendly or to provide more specifics for what the expectation looked like, but the standard remained the minimal student expectation, or the "3." Together as a class, we would then fill in the "4- Exceeding Expectations" and then digress to filling in the "2- Approaching Expectations" and the "1- Below Expectations."

Pictured is a starting point for a project-based, cross-curricular study using Sixth Grade ELA Standards addressing research and presentation.  (This rubric could easily be extended to include science or social studies content as a final project evaluation.)

Last night, it just occurred to me that I am on a mission to see to it all students achieve beyond expectations.

Filling in that 4 is too limiting to a classroom of eager young minds!

I'm not out as an educator to have kids inch above what the state expects.

I am out to enable kids to blow away the expectations.

A New Way to Write a Rubric -Encouraging Students to Achieve Beyond Expectations

So, if I were in the classroom, I would still begin an investigative unit or project based lesson with a co-created rubric. However, I would only co-create the "3" "2" and "1." I wouldn't touch that "4" column again.

The "4" would be blank and I would let students know they were allowed to fill in those boxes if the work exceeded the standard expectations.  It would be the Blast Off Boxes, the Blow-Me-Away Boxes, or maybe just the "Beyond Expectations" box.

Then, upon completion of the study, when students went to the self-assessment,  I would ask they circle the "3," "2" or "1"  by row.  

Or, hopefully, the "4-Exceeding Expectations" is circled instead, and the box is filled in by the individual or small group describing  how expectations were exceeded.

Since I am not in the classroom at the moment, I invite someone who is to give this "new way to write a rubric" a try and report back.  Did students blow away your expectations?  I hope so.

Three Simple Ways to Enable a Young Reader

Dear Parents:  

You are your child's first teacher.  Here are three simple ways to enable your young reader.

1) Practice nursery rhymes. 

2) Teach letter sounds with lowercase letters. 

3) Read to your child.  

It is that simple.  

Remind yourself to keep it simple and you will relish the results.

1) Teach your child nursery rhymes.

Rhymes help establish phonological awareness, critical in literacy development.

Sing nursery rhymes face to face.  The child needs to hear your voice, see your lips and interpret your expression.  A television does not have the same impact on the young brain as you.   The brain is an active and natural pattern decoder. Nursery rhymes establish patterns of the English language in the child's mind.

2) Teach your child letter sounds with lowercase letters.

Letter sounds with lowercase letters establish the *alphabetic principle and deepen understanding of phonemic awareness.

"Phonemic awareness instruction is most effective

• when children are taught to manipulate phonemes by using the letters of the alphabet.
• when instruction focuses on only one or two rather than several types of phoneme manipulation."          Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read (Teacher’s Guide), Kindergarten through Grade 3

Begin with incremental steps starting with letter sounds and lowercase letters.  Start with one lowercase letter symbol and one sound, the hard consonant or the short vowel.  The Montessori method and Core Knowledge Curriculum both begin with this simple shift, teaching letter sounds first.

(I recommend the Souns program for establishing letter-sound knowledge because it brings the abstract symbol used in literacy to life through play for the young learner.  However, if your means do not allow the purchase of a set, you can also practice letter sounds using a stick and some mud.)    

3)  Read to your child, face to face.

Reading, speaking and interacting directly with your child increases the child's vocabulary and comprehension.

Read to your child and talk about the book.   A student needs a robust vocabulary for success in literacy.

All you need is a library card to get started.

Follow these three guidelines for teaching at home before your child enters school, and your child will be ready to read. (Disclaimer:  Your child will probably already be decoding since you honored his/her analytic skills.)

*The alphabetic principle is the foundation needed for success in reading.  Surprisingly, the alphabetic principle has nothing to do with a letter name. Sing the alphabet song for dictionary skills needed down the road in school, but do not associate the symbol with the letter name in the beginning.  Simply focus on the letter sounds.

Beyond Expectations

A few years ago, I received a quick reply from Rod Muth, my former adviser and now professor emeritus, that read, "Lots of work to do to make sure future schools really do the work that they should so that all kids learn beyond expectations!"  

Reflecting upon these two words changed the way I understand the profession, and became a driving force and path to clarity in understanding and navigating the complicated world of schooling, education and reform.

beyond expectations

the seed

a letter to my former student

don't rise to meet my expectations

go beyond them

drive past my wildest dreams and wave

on the highway to your destiny

stop only to look through that window

and

figure out how to fly

metaphorically

literally

poetically

fly

I'll let you flap your wings
I'll model how to fly
brush you off when you fall
And I'll watch you learn what you were born to do

go

amaze me

surprise me
teach us all

I'll be observing 

cheering you on

supporting you with the knowledge

 and revealing to you the skills that helped me

and tomorrow

you'll find me

bragging how I knew you then

Curriculum and Standards- The Difference

What is the difference between a curriculum and a set of standards?

In recent years, this has become a confusing question. 

Curriculum used to be the driving force in a classroom.  

Today, standards are the driving force.

It is more important than ever to distinguish and understand.

Standards are not curriculum. 

(Standards)

(Curriculum)

The illustration is one interpretation of the Teaching and Learning Cycle published on the Ohio Department of Education's Website.  

A curriculum outlines what the teacher is expected to teach. 

Standards are the minimal expectations students are expected to learn. 

The curriculum is the content.

Standards are the expectations. 

Teachers used to receive a curriculum and then set the standard.

Today, teachers receive a curriculum and the set standards.  

Upon assessment, standards determine if the student met the learning expectations.

Teachers used to determine if the student met the standard expectations using grades.  

Today, state assessments determine if the student has met the expectations. 

Steve Denning's article, "The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education" made the point of "Respecting Goodhart's Law. The current focus on testing has tended to make test results the goal of the system, rather than a measure. The change in goal means recognizing that a test is only measure. Using tests as the goal infringes Goodhart’s Law: when measure becomes the goal, it ceases to be an effective measure." 

So here is the question I am mulling, and I ask for your help...

Now that the Common Core State Standards are here, how can we use them for good measure in the classroom while respecting Goodhart's Law?

I welcome your thoughts.

Souns® and Rhymes

Souns and Rhymes class is family literacy at its best.
Parents or caregivers attend with children who are not yet in school. 

The design of this class is to establish a foundation so firm that no holes will ever appear in foundational literacy skills.  It's the simplicity that makes the impact profound.  Souns and Rhymes consists of two core elements: letter sounds and nursery rhymes.  The class is interactive and hands-on, bringing language and literacy to life.  

Goal of Souns Time: Establish the alphabetic principle through letter sounds needed for reading 

Goal of Rhyme Time: Establish phonemic and phonological awareness, critical in acquiring alphabetics.

What is Souns?
 “Souns is a hands-on early literacy program that teaches letter-sound associations through play.  The child is given the right information (letter sounds) at the right time (birth to three) in the right way (kinesthetically and incidentally.) This practice makes a powerful difference! ’

Rationale Using Neuroscience and Reading Research: 

“Phonemic Awareness and the Wise Mother Goose…  Tucked inside “Hickory, dickory dock, a mouse ran up the clock” and other rhymes can be found a host of potential aids to sound awareness- alliteration, assonance, rhyme, repetition. Alliterative and rhyming sounds teach the young ear that words can sound similar because they share a first or last sound”  (Wolf, 2007, p. 98-99).  

“…what can psychology and neuroscience recommend to teachers and parents who wish to optimize reading instruction? …we know that conversion of letters into sounds is the key stage in reading acquisition. All teaching efforts should be initially focused on a single goal, the grasp of the alphabetic principle whereby each letter or grapheme represents a phoneme” (Dehaene, 2009, p. 228).

The brain is wired to solve and is constantly searching for connections and patterns in the surrounding world.  “Children make errors such as blowed and knowed more often than for any other kind of irregular verb.”  These errors are not made because of poor modeling.  The errors are made because the brain is wired for language. (Pinker, 2011, p. 72).

Rhyme time consists of reading and experiencing a nursery rhyme.  The nursery rhyme is repeated and the “main idea” of the rhyme is present and real for the child to experience.  The purpose is to establish phonemic and phonological awareness and the language code using rhythm, rhyme, repetition and realia.

References 

Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain: The science and evolution of a human invention. New York, NY.  Penguin Viking.

Liberman, I., Shankweiler, D & Liberman A. (1990). The alphabetic principle and learning to read. Haskins Laboratories Status Report on Speech Research. Retrieved March 29,2012 from http://www.haskins.yale.edu/sr/SR101/SR101_01.pdf

National Reading Panel. (2012). Report of the national reading panel: Teaching children to read reports of the subgroups Retrieved March 15, 2012, from http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/report.cfm

Pinker, S. (2011) Words and rules:  The ingredients of language. New York, NY. HarperCollins Publishers.

Research and Development Staff. (2000). Nursery rhymes and phonemic awareness Sadlier-Oxford A Division of William H. Sadlier, Inc Retrieved July 14, 2012, from http://www.isd300.k12.mn.us/ES/kinder/KINDERGARTEN%20INFORMATION/nursery%20rhymes%20handout.pdf

Robb, D. (2007). Ox, house, stick: The history of our alphabet. Watertown, MA. Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Souns. (2010). Souns® for literacy, Language and literacy develop hand in hand. (White Paper) Retrieved October 24, 2011, from
http://souns.org/images/texts/whitepaperforwebsite1.pdfhttp://souns.org/images/texts/whitepaperforwebsite1.pdf

Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the squid: The story and science of the reading brain. New York, NY. Harper Perennial.

Discourse and Debate: Should we begin teaching children letter sounds first with lowercase letters instead of letter names with uppercase letters?

LinkedIn Groups

Collaborate Montessori Initiative 
Literacy Leaders
Reading Specialists and Reading Coaches

TED Website

TED Conversation

TED-Ed Community Forum

A Traditionally-Trained Educator's Observations at Counterpane Montessori School

"If you haven't already figured it out, I'm a bit of a Maverick," Brenda Erickson explained shortly after we met.

If you need proof, visit Counterpane, the PreK-12 Montessori school she founded.  Montessori schools are not unusual, but a Montessori high school is highly unusual as Maria Montessori only left instructions through the elementary grades.

And if you need even more proof, take a look at Souns, a Montessori-minded early literacy program
designed for ages 0-3.

On July 26, 2013, my daughters and I had the opportunity to visit Counterpane Montessori.  Pulling in to Brenda's cottage, the girls were immediately drawn to the small stables in between the cottage and the school nestled in some woods.  In the stables were a few pigs, donkeys, sheep and horses living in perfect harmony.

Just across the way were chickens roaming the street before being tucked into a coop at night.  My children were elated to discover a freshly lain egg around noon on the second day.  

Discovery and exploration led the way inside the brick and mortar walls of Counterpane.  

Logical reasoning is honored and concentration is practiced. 

 Fundamental mathematical principles are taught in concrete ways.  

Abstract detours to understanding were not found in the primary classroom.

The school day for the primary students began with weeding a garden and sorting seeds.
Science is at hand at Counterpane.

Human needs are validated evidenced by a mobile explaining the abstract concept in a concrete way. 

Grey matter about the world is revered and the subject of geography was taught.  Older children explored it in the abstract in two dimensions while younger children used the older children's knowledge as an aid in constructing their understanding.

Art is the heart of Counterpane, just as it is the lifeline of its founder, fine artist Brenda Erickson.  

The art room is just off to stage left and even includes wool from the sheep in the stable sheered, dyed and woven.

So how does the Montessori method extend into high school? Is it a constructivist free for all?

 No.
  

It is a structured, focused learning environment and the atmosphere is collegiate.

I jumped in on a tour intended for interested parents and listened as the teacher explained how students had coursework mirroring a traditional high school student.  For example, a student was expected to study Algebra for five hours a week but had choice as to when to make that happen. So if said student was doing work and found it difficult to focus, she could take a break and step outside the glass doors to play guitar for a while before returning to work. Some students may complete the expectations of a high school diploma in three and a half years.  Others may take five years.  It depended entirely upon the choices made by the high school student and the intention was to prepare said student for success in college.

Mastery is required of all content and failing a class before moving along is not allowed. 

Interests led the way as a student made decisions of what course of study to focus on from one moment to another.   Reading and writing about specific interests is encouraged as well.

However, much to my surprise, interests did not dictate content.  

One small group sat in a circle reading a shared novel with a teacher.  On the other side of the room a small group worked with another teacher on math.  It was quite traditional in content but exceptional in timing. Students move along at an individualized pace, not one predetermined for them by a grade level that they happened to fall into.  It is as if every child in the building has an Individualized Education Plan.

Teachers were very much instrumental to every classroom I observed, but the students were the musicians.  

While at Counterpane,I had the distinct pleasure of meeting a few revolutionaries in the field.  Cap Lee came with Luz to learn Souns for her village school in Columbia.  Angela Dye attended to further her professional development and networking and she is a trailblazer for project-based learning in the area.  Cap, Luz and Angela are each every much the edmover Brenda Erickson is, and I'm honored to know all of them.