I Got SWAG

Your planning pal, Lori

May this not happen to you.

Brace yourselves. August is upon us. There's lots to do, and we need all our tools in our toolbox!

A large portion of my day involves facilitating 4 different PLCs. That's a lot of curriculum for me to keep straight. That's a lot of obligations for me to juggle. From planning meeting to planning meeting, I find that teachers often forget what was previously discussed because maybe...just maybe...they're preoccupied with eleventy billion other things. One teacher seems to take copious notes in a tabbed binder with her printed and color coded calendar. (Yikes. How do you do that?) One teacher takes frantic notes on random slips of paper. (Bless her. We're kindred scattered spirits.) Another teacher takes no notes. He politely nods and contributes when he feels strongly about something. We spend a lot of time catching up, trying to get back on the same page, and then the bell rings, and it's time to go. 

I'd had enough of this after the first couple of weeks at my new school last year, and I had to find a way to get my teams to collaborate, to organize upcoming curriculum, to fill in gaps in the curriculum (I'm sure that never happens to you), and to ensure skills-based instruction. So often, when we're pressed for time, the quality of our instruction suffers because we're just treading water. Tread no more, my friends. Reclaim your SWAG. 

My SWAG (Six Weeks at a Glance) document is so ridiculously simple and you may already have something like it. This little guy is my BFF because do you remember the part where I said I facilitate four separate PLCs? It's also a great way to pull in all members of your team and keep everyone on the same page while still allowing room for individual teaching styles. Take a look at a Sample SWAG here. 

If you're on a nine week grading period, I'm so sorry. You'll have to call it a NWAG, and that's kind of unfortunate. It sounds a little bit like a weather phenomenon. We haven't seen a NWAG this size in 50 years! But I digress...

Building the SWAG: I build this FOR my teams.

• Keep your district curriculum or scope and sequence handy so that you are playing well and within the rules.
• Strand--I designate the first column as the strand. Here you can identify whether your students will be reading, writing, editing/revising... This should fluctuate often.
• Genre/Type--The next column helps you quickly determine what genres you're working with, what mode of writing you're teaching, or what grammar skill you're focusing on. You should also find that this changes often. 
• Standards/TEKS--I'm writing to you from the great state of Texas, so I keep my TEKS handy. And yes...I type them every single time (mostly). As an instructional specialist, it helps to keep me rooted in the language of the standards so that I understand the depth, complexity, and rigor required. 
• As one six weeks is ending and another is on the horizon, we set aside a meeting for a SWAG planning session. I show them the latest SWAG that I've built. It's never set in stone. Instead, we make sure that the best possible texts have been chosen. Sometimes I'll even put out a request for help finding paired texts. This initial meeting is set up only to solidify the big picture for the six weeks. 

Maintaining the SWAG: I build this WITH my teams.

• It works best if you use Google docs so that it is a collaborative effort. 
• The fourth and last column is designated for "Suggested Time Frame and Activities." 
• At this point, it's PLC as usual. We use data to determine areas of focus. That's a whole other blog post. We take each component of the SWAG and determine how many days we need to spend with it and what instructional strategies we will use. 
• I do my best to pull in all team members. If we decided that in the next week we will do a card sort, a close reading of an expository text using a graphic organizer and then an exit ticket--then we will task list those individual items out to individual teachers. 
• Who is making the card sort? When will you have it done? Are you going to cut it out, or are we cutting our own? (Heads up, guys...always make people cut their own!)
• Who is making the graphic organizer? When can you have it done?
• Who will create the exit ticket? 
• Rinse. Lather. Repeat. This is the structure of our PLCs. It's organized, efficient, and saves time for real brainstorming to happen. The WHAT is already laid out. All I need my teachers to focus on is the HOW. (And gosh...they're AWESOME!)

Owning the SWAG: Teachers do this THEMSELVES. 

• Teachers take the big ideas from the SWAG and tailor it to their own teaching style, their own students and class periods, and their own pacing. 

The SWAG is my favorite. It takes work on the front end, but you'll be smooth sailing before you know it! 

Captain Hook

ahoy, matey- Suzanne

Is your class fun?  Is your class rigorous?  Before we proceed, stop to watch this video if you haven't already.  It's hilarious only because it's so true.  I recently finished a book study of Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess with our district.  I'd heard about and was intrigued by the read, and it came at a very applicable time.  Dave (we Skyped, and I feel certain he'd want me to call him Dave), seeks to exposed the false dichotomy between fun and rigor. 

We all know that engaged students learn more.  Yet, sometime "fun" seems frivolous, something to be cut if presented with a lack of time or resources.  I like to be hospitable.  The thrill of people coming over, setting a table, and preparing an obscene amount of food gets my blood pumping.  For this reason, his 'Welcome to the BBQ' example spoke to me.  He talks about the effort he would put into inviting you over for a BBQ- asking if you like steak, how you'd like it seasoned and cooked.  He'd prepare all the fixins' to go along side it, drinks to wash it down with, and dessert to top it all off.  He absolutely would not serve a rare steak- how embarrassing!  However, this is how too many educators approach the goings-on of their own classrooms.  He writes, "Teachers like this walk into class with their raw, unseasoned content, plop it down in front of their kids and say, 'Eat it!'...No wonder their students act as if learning is a form of torture that must be endured as they choke down their lessons."

The key he finds is in asking good "hook" questions in the planning process.  These questions drive creativity and innovation and, ultimately, engagement.  

Questions to consider to "hook" your students:

• How can I incorporate movement into this lesson?
• How can I get my class outside my four walls for this lesson?
• What can my students draw or make that would help them understand and retain this information?
• What would be the perfect song or type of music to create the right mood or atmosphere?
• How can I provide opportunities for autonomy and choice in this lesson?

By appealing to student-centered learning styles this "reinforces the value on their unique talents and allows them additional chances to see school as a place that encourages rather than stifles creativity".  

This book came along when I needed an instructional pick-me-up, and that's just what it did.  I love the idea that creativity is everyone's responsibility and these questions help up plan for student engagement and success.

You can follow Dave on Twitter for more pirate booty.

Show Me

your visual visionary, Suzanne

I learned how to change the hubcap on my car from an eleven-year-old boy on YouTube.  It doesn't stop there, I've learned how to better apply my eye make-up (don't look closely), tone my arms (again, don't look closely), and more efficiently fold laundry all thanks to the wonders of YouTube.  I'm the kinda girl where I need you to show me how to do something and then I've got it.  

Last Friday, we had a visitor at school, Dr. Marcia Tate of Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites notoriety.  Get this- she came to teach a lesson...to our students...in our classrooms! *Insert instant street cred.*  A group of teachers and I watched her teach a 30 minute mini-lesson to 4th graders, and then we met to discuss.  Her model came from her experience teaching in Singapore.  There teachers regularly get together to watch, reflect, and improve the lesson cycle.  After a lesson, teachers answer the following four questions:
1.  What did you notice in the lesson? (practices and strategies)
2.  What were the lesson's strengths?
3.  What were the lesson's weaknesses? Or how could it be improved?
4.  Questions and Answers

I love this!  Our job is 90% marketing.  When I attend a training or conference, I notice not only the strategies that are used.  Many times I think or say aloud to myself, "I like the way she said that!"  I might also pick up on the sequencing or pacing of the lesson.  The bottom line: I'm gaining so much more than if someone were merely telling me about the practice.

What an impact this practice would have on our own PLCs and learning communities!  I offer you this challenge- make modeling a regularly part of your planning.  Even better, invite team members into your classroom to see strategies in action.  I learn more when you show me.

The Big Picture

snapshot by Lori

The beginning of the school year can be incredibly overwhelming. From the physical space of your classroom to school supplies to your actual instruction, everything can feel incredibly daunting.

I'm not particularly crafty and I think that most of us have refined the art of back-to-school shopping and hitting those penny days at certain stores. I can however help when it comes to thinking about the bigger picture of your instruction. 

• First of all, never be a singleton. I know many teachers like to ascribe to the close-my-door-and-just-teach philosophy, but I truly believe that is detrimental to your professional growth and your own sanity. When you share the planning load, school is just a happier place for everyone. I'm a huge believer in quality common planning time. 

Consider a big-picture planning template like this one where literature, targeted skills, and specific strategies are pre-planned. Notice that the two awesome teachers in this sample only write one lesson plan each but receive the benefit of two full lesson plans. Imagine what you can accomplish with 3 or 4 teachers in a six week period!

• Secondly, plan to chunk the literature. Determine what literature you'll need to teach. This is typically a choice driven by the curriculum, but that doesn't mean you hit play and sit at your desk or spend 50 minutes popcorn reading. [Stab me in the eye with a dull pencil.] Chunk the text by measuring its literary worth. In other words, think about what objectives and skills can you teach with that particular chunk of text. If you find yourself choosing excerpts that are mostly plot driven, then you are not allowing for deep instruction. Granted, sometimes we have to have those plot pieces, but those should not take much of our time.

• Finally, choose the best tool for the job and plan it ahead of time. For example, if you know you need to teach with a chunk of text where the focus will be word choice, what instructional strategy will you use? How will your kids get it? Alarm bells should sound when you hear yourself or your fellow teachers begin to use phrases like, "Well we're going to talk about diction..." That is easily translated to mean that you the teacher will talk and your students will artfully tune you out. Remember to keep your Mayday Menus handy for situations where you feel stuck. And always add to your bag of tricks. Keep your instruction fresh and new.

The days of summer are still upon us. Enjoy easy mornings while slowly sipping your coffee. Revel in the fact that your most difficult decision is perhaps which pair of flip flops you'll wear today. Use these last weeks to fully re-charge. You'll hit the ground running soon enough and you'll be so ready.

I plan. You plan. We plan!

brought to you by Lori

Allow me to paint a picture for you. 

It is third period, and you are expected to meet with your grade level team for planning. It takes a while to get started because, naturally, several people need to take a bathroom break. Another teacher needs to heat up her lunch. Somebody else forgot about the meeting, but they're on the way. 

You finally sit down in an impromptu circle of student desks. Big teacher bags crowd the floor. Calendars, pens, pencils, highlighters, books, and cups all find a delicate balance on each teacher's tiny desk. One teacher starts talking about a discipline issue while another chimes in about a scheduling problem. The topic drifts from students to administration to weekend plans at Great Wolf Lodge. Finally, with about 10 minutes left in the planning session, everyone talks about the most recent lesson, why the kids had a hard time with it and how it would all be better if only x, y, or z. 

Planning is over. Nothing happened. You are then up until goodness knows when scrambling to be prepared for the next day. No bueno.

When I became the content specialist last year, I struggled to make common planning a meaningful and efficient time for teachers. Teachers were upset with me. They wanted a calendar. They wanted an agenda. They wanted consistency.

I was upset with teachers. I wanted to not run the meetings. I wanted everyone to share ideas. I desperately wanted to foster collaboration.

This year, I knew I needed reinforcements, so I looked to an unlikely source: a math teacher. Our Algebra I team on campus is notorious for having efficient, fun, and productive common planning. I wanted in on that action! So after talking to the math specialist and taking careful notes, here's what's in place. 

My 9th grade team consists of 3 teachers, most of them all fairly new to the profession. Rather than each person writing their own lesson plans day in and day out, we set up a rotation where each teacher writes two lessons at a time. That's it. Just two. My job is to help teachers lay out the big framework for the six weeks, and then they take over for the nitty gritty. 

• Each teacher plans two lessons. 
• We meet twice a week.
• Let's say that Awesome Teacher 1 is planning for January 21st and 22nd. We will hold a planning session previous to that lesson (perhaps January 16th) where Awesome Teacher 1 presents the lesson plan to the group. We workshop the lesson plan, tweaking it to provide multiple opportunities for student-centered activities. My primary goal in the planning session is to ensure that the lesson is skills-based and that we have built in the appropriate amount of rigor.

Here's the beautiful part. Our campus is on a block schedule, so any given teacher utilizing the common planning rotation could potentially write only 4 lesson plans for the entire month! The scheduled rotation brings purpose to the meeting and provides a built-in agenda. Since teachers take turns planning, it fosters collaboration and allows me to take a step back and function more as support. 

It sounds very simple, and it is! But sometimes it is hard to bring structure to something that seems so big and difficult to tackle. It works well if you are reading short pieces within a six weeks or even if you are working on a bigger piece of literature--like a novel--for the unit. When you map out a big picture and assign individual lessons according to the planning rotation, you lighten the planning load which allows for more effective planning time and...dare I say it...better lessons!

Sometimes it can be hard to get everyone on board, but it is a great opportunity for growth. If your planning time feels wasted and inefficient, map out the next big unit, split up the planning, and see what happens!