Teaching with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen Chapter 5: Classroom-Level Success Factors “The best way to launch an improvement effort is to increase the odds of success with the factor you have the most influence over: the quality of teaching in your school.” Eric Jensen Important Question: “Do I have what it takes to succeed at working with kids from poverty?” (p. 106) In Chapter 4 we learned about district level success factors. Chapter 5 takes student success to the classroom level. Although the list of classroom factors that contribute to student success is huge, Eric Jensen narrowed the findings from the research to five themes: SHARE · Standards-Based Curriculum and Instruction · Hope Building · Arts, Athletics, and Advanced Placement · Retooling of the Operating System · Engaging Instruction S—Standards Based Curriculum and Instruction includes formative and summative assessments, using data to guide instruction, instructional groupings, and differentiated instruction. We have a start with our math assessments, writing rubrics, and reading assessments. Suggested action steps include: *Turn standards into meaningful units o Identify core concepts, skills, and essential questions (Does this sound familiar, Betty? Think about our lesson plans for our Write to Learn Project. We used an Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe lesson plan template. The template itself helped us think through what was important for students to learn.) o Chunk similar objectives together within units to help students make sense of their learning (the Math CAP process) o Help students see patterns within the content; resist teaching isolated, unrelated objectives o Create open-ended questions to guide instruction and learning o Develop detailed lesson plans that utilize challenging verbs rather than simply jotting down a topic in your lesson plans, keeping in mind what will be assessed at the end. *Pre-assess (Our formative assessments) *Adjust your lesson plans based on the pre-assessment results H—Hope Building “However, the likely conclusion—the one that says children of poverty will necessarily do poorly in school—should not be automatic.” Eric Jensen Action steps to ensure that doesn’t happen include: · Inventory students and staff · Implement 24/7 Hope (if they don’t have it, teach it) · Monitor Results Jensen’s quote really struck home with me. Too often I find myself trying to make excuses for some of our students. When I do that, I contribute to the cycle of expect less, get less, and lose hope. Since research shows that hope changes brain chemistry which influences behavior, a better approach for me would be to show students that persistence and hard work result in learning. By pointing out what the student did to be successful rather than just saying “Great Job,” we can help students feel hopeful that doing the same things next time would produce another success. A—Arts, Athletics, and Advanced Placement We have several things in place with this one! After School Actors, intramural team sports, and our music programs. Cindy Brown even has the data to show how students in After School Actors improve in reading. Yea, Cindy! There is another program I would love to start here at South called Girls on the Run. It is a program that works with third and fourth grade girls to help them with self- image, nutrition, and physical activity. Anyone interested in learning more about this? It fits in with Eric Jensen’s action steps for this theme. In one of the successful schools stories in this section, the performing arts teachers met with the regular education teachers to integrate key concepts and vocabulary from each subject into the performing arts curriculum and performances. We have a start to this with our special area teachers attending grade level meetings and integrating classroom curriculum vocabulary and concepts into the special area classes. (Think Common Core) R—Retooling of the Operating System Implement CHAMPS. If students do not have these necessary essential skills, we have to teach them. Champion mindset, Hopeful effort, Attention skills, Memory, Processing skills, Sequencing skills Suggested Action Steps: *Use a 360 degree assessment -Consult the data to determine strengths and weaknesses *Develop Targeted plan -Students need consistent, sustained support in skill building (Think: I do, We do, You do) *Enrich operating systems – CHAMPS *Monitor Results and modify skill building as needed E—Engaging Instruction “Generally speaking, engaging instruction is any strategy that gets students to participate emotionally, cognitively, or behaviorally.” Eric Jensen Suggested Action Plan: · Find, recruit and train the best staff you can find · Gather information from students · Communicate the evidence and make a plan · Add a strategy each week and monitor the progress Tips for making the instruction engaging: · Switch up social groups regularly · Incorporate movement (stations, switching etc…) · Ask more compelling questions · Appreciate and acknowledge every response · Use energizers (games, dramas, simulations, demos, etc…) · Keep the content alive with call backs, hand-raisers, stretching etc… · Be passionate. If you don’t make it exciting and interesting, it won’t be! Eric Jensen called the classroom “ground zero.” It is the place where we have the most control of what happens with student learning. For me, it comes back to the question I quoted earlier, “Do I have what it takes to succeed at working with kids from poverty?” (p. 106) Comments are closed.
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