The Power of Reflection

August is a powerful month for teachers. We've rested, we've recharged, we've "Sharpened the Saw" in 7 Habits language.

And we've reflected. (Trust me, that's what we were doing on the beach. I promise. It just looked like a nap.)

What worked? What didn't? What will I use again, and what will get chucked into the circular filing cabinet? That TpT lesson looks amazing -- ooh, and what about having my kids blog this year?

Forget spring -- August is the time for new beginnings and fresh ideas, at least in Educationland.

This process of reflecting shouldn't be left to teachers alone. It's a powerful tool, and one we need to help our kids learn to use. In fact, I name 2015-2016 the "Year of Reflection."

I'll think about it and let you know how it works out.

After my nap.

On the Nature of Paradigm Shifts and Control

   I am a really impatient person.
   If I see a cool idea, or a lesson that I think will work really well with my students, I want to try it RIGHT NOW.
   This has led to some spectacular successes (see the robot dinosaur).
   And some spectacular flops.
   But I keep trying, because I am not afraid of risks. I am not afraid to try something new. And sometimes, in my heart of hearts, I get really frustrated with people who are.
   That's when I have to remind myself -- often multiple times -- of what is in my circle of influence.
   It's part of Covey's 7 Habits -- your circle of concern is everything that you worry about. At work, this usually revolves around adequate differentiation for my gifted students. But I cannot walk into every teacher's classroom and demand immediate change (although I sometimes fantasize about this).

   Instead, I have to figure out what is in my circle of influence -- what can I realistically do to affect that which is in my circle of concern?
   First and foremost, I had to get involved. In her blog, Tamara Fisher wrote "If you're not at the table, then you're on the menu." So I joined committees, and leadership teams.
   This week, I got the chance to have a big impact on my circle of concern. At one of the meetings, we began talking about how to keep the momentum going for the Leader In Me on our campus. It was decided that next year, we would roll out the new "Habit 8" -- the habit about finding your voice, and your passion.
   I waited, baited breath, for a chance to speak. Because I had a COOL IDEA. One that I would love for us all to do RIGHT NOW.
   My moment came.
   "Um, have you guys heard of Genius Hour?"
   Based off of Google's 20% time for independent, autonomous projects, schools across the nation have been jumping on the Genius Hour idea. Basically, you dedicate one hour per week to independent, self-chosen research. Your students can learn about anything they might be passionate about, from robotics to fashion design to the Mona Lisa.  My third, fourth and fifth graders are all wrapped up in their Genius Hour projects (more on that next week), and I think it would be an amazing thing for our campus to implement next year.
   I'm really hoping -- fingers crossed, toes crossed, even eyes crossed -- that my suggestion takes off. Because it would lead to big change -- paradigm-shift type of change -- on our campus, and for our kids.
   But I can't control that. I can only influence, a little at a time.
   I really need Master Yoda.

Sure, Guys, We Can Make a Robot Dinosaur Out of LEGOs...

   A few months ago, I was having lunch with my second graders (I do this with every GT group, every other week). 
   And I asked them, "What ideas do you have for our next project?"
   "Oooh! We should do dinosaurs!"
   "Robots!"
   "Learn to blow stuff up!"
   "Basketball -- we should learn about basketball!"
   "LEGOs! I love to make stuff with LEGOs!"
   I took a deep breath, preparing to settle them down a bit, when one of the boys (it's an all-boys group), piped up. "Guys, guys -- we can make this a win/win."
I sat back in my chair and listened as this 7-year-old negotiated a project that every single kid was on board with.
   "We can make a robot, out of LEGOs, in the shape of a dinosaur -- and it can throw a basketball!" he said. (You will notice that even the 7-year-old knew the blowing-stuff-up option was a no-go.)
   "Yeah!" "Yeah!"
   Then seven sets of big eyes turned to me. "Can we do that, Mrs. Zepeda?"
   And I was so impressed at the level of conversation, and their use of Covey's 7 Habits to listen and negotiate with each other, that I said,

   "Sure, guys, we can make a robot dinosaur out of LEGOs."

   Now, to figure out how...

Eh...Maybe I'll Write This Tomorrow

Hello, folks. My name is Jennine, and I'm a procrastinator.

This is a long-standing habit, and I believe it may be genetic. I come from a family of procrastinators,  and if I had children, I'm sure I would be raising little procrastinators, too.

I once spoke to a class of middle-school-aged gifted students about procrastination, because the truth is, when you're a highly capable person, you really can get away with it -- a lot. "Look, guys, I understand leaving things until the last minute. It just can't LOOK like it was left until the last minute."

The "last-minute" and I are on rather intimate terms. He attends our birthday parties, I send him cards on Christmas (well, usually around the first of the year...or perhaps March).

I bring this up because I have not posted a single thing since November.

Oh, I've had thousands of ideas. My kids are doing amazing things in class -- building robots, creating Leprechaun Traps, even launching "Genius Hour,"....but somehow, I just could not gather the gumption to sit down and write about them.

I could make excuses, and some of them may even be legit. But the honest truth is I did not set a deadline, I did not have anybody to hold me accountable, and even though this blog is a personal Wildly Important Goal -- without accountability, it's a goal that just didn't happen.

So today, I am setting a deadline: Every Saturday, I will post some fun, creative or interesting ideas for teachers. There. It's official -- I can't back out now.

I may be writing late Friday night (or even in the wee hours of Saturday morning), but it will be on time, every time. On my honor as a procrastinator.

Negotiating a Win/Win in Class

I’ve been pondering the idea of win/win situations lately, and their application in the classroom. In my work, I hear a lot from teachers frustrated with their GT students who are refusing to perform assignments to their high ability. This ranges from reading logs to projects to daily classwork to homework – it’s not getting done, and the teacher is at the end of her rope with explaining, cajoling, calling parents, giving “working lunches” – nothing is working.

And I’m beginning to think, “Well, yeah – you’ve created, at best, a win/lose relationship.” But, how can I spread this message with diplomacy, without making it seem like an attack on a teacher but an observation of the situation from somebody who sees both sides?

Covey’s relationships, from his 7 Habits series:

Win/win – everybody comes away with the feeling that their opinion has been valued, and their needs are being met.

Win/lose – one person comes away with their needs being met; the other person is doing all the “giving” in the relationship.

Lose/lose – neither party is satisfied with the outcome of this situation.

To examine these relationships in a typical classroom setting:

Student X never finishes classroom assignments (let alone projects or homework!). If he does finish something, he will usually be the last one done. However, what has been finished shows high mastery of skill.

A lose/lose outcome: X’s teacher insists on him doing the same work as everybody else, regardless of mastery shown. It’s only fair – if the rest of the class has to do 15 problems, then so does X. His folder is full of messages to his parents about incomplete assignments, and his grades are terrible. He has shut down emotionally in class, to the point where even the bare minimum is not being met. X’s teacher is frustrated – she can’t get him to do anything. X is frustrated – school is not meeting his needs at all, and he’d really rather not be there.

A win/lose outcome: X’s teacher insists on him doing the same work as everybody else, regardless of mastery shown. It’s only fair – if the rest of the class has to do 15 problems, then so does X. If he doesn’t get it done in class, then he is made to work during lunch or other “down” time in the day. X complies, and the work is “completed.” The quality, however, is fairly poor, and does not show his true capability. The teacher has “won” – her needs are being met (mostly) with his completed assignments and compliance. X, however, has gained little from this interaction other than an understanding of “how to play the (school) game.”

A win/win outcome: X’s teacher determines her non-negotiables for an assignment. It must be high quality; it must show mastery of the work. However, she allows room for negotiation. Instead of completing the entire worksheet, perhaps X can get a “quality discount.” If, say, he can choose which 6 problems to complete, and completes them without error, then he doesn’t have to finish the rest of the assignment, and is graded on what he has done.  But that’s not fair! Everybody else has to complete the assignment! Well, then why not offer this to everybody in the class? If the majority are showing mastery of a subject after only completing half of the practice…then perhaps they are all ready to move on, and insisting on finishing a page for the sake of finishing it is a waste of the teacher’s time as well as the students’. The teacher gets what she needs – an assessment of what the student is capable of doing. And X gets what he needs – some choice over how his time will be used.

It seems, as we get further into the school year and the stresses of planning, grading, state assessments and the like begin to mount, the willingness to negotiate with students becomes less and less. What students need – and GT students need in particular – is some choice and control over what they do and how they do it. I don’t mean letting a student get away with not working at all – that is still a win/lose relationship, although the student in that case is the victor, and the teacher the losing party. 

But please, as you plan, identify areas where student choice can be implemented. If you find yourself in a win/lose or lose/lose relationship, consider stepping back and talking to your student.

“What is it about this assignment that keeps you from completing it? This is why I gave you the assignment, and what I need you to show me through it. How can we rework this so we both feel as if we’re getting what we need from it?”

With a little bit of flexibility, you may just save yourself – and your students – a lot of frustration and wasted time.

The Multiple Uses of Math Dice

I'm sure this discovery is nothing new to you full-time math teachers, but I have been having a blast using dice in my ALLab this year.

In the basic tournament game, kids roll a target number, then roll their blue dice and come up with an equation to reach that number. The person with an equation closest to the target number wins the round.

What I've done with math dice:

Part-part-whole: My first graders roll the white 12-sided dice, add the two numbers together for their target number, then roll their blue dice and "synergize" (one of our 7 Habits) to build addition equations to reach their target number. (For example, 2+2+5+6+6=21.) They score tokens for every equation they can put together.

Place value & rounding: My third graders rolled the blue and white dice for a random number (up to five digits). They then had to practice rounding their number to each place value. Bonus: Kids who wanted a challenge added in a second set of math dice so they were rounding to the billions!

Graphing: A group of my second graders was getting bored interpreting bar graphs, so we used the dice to create their own. First, they rolled the three blue dice 10 times, using tally marks to track how often each was rolled. Then, they created bar graphs to show their results, and wrote two questions that other students could use to interpret their graphs.

How have you used Math Dice?

Stealing Ideas

I played a really mean trick on my students recently -- but for a good reason.

As they walked in the door, I told them, very excitedly, that we were going to have a drawing contest. Being the competitive GT kids that they are, they were all super excited, and immediately got to work drawing the best space-scape, plant or structural drawing they could. They were really into it -- hunched over, shielding their amazing, winning drawings from prying eyes.

They had five minutes -- timed. Then I had them trade their drawings with another person, put their names on that person's drawing, and hand them in. This is where it got a little mean.

"Oh, John!" I exclaimed, looking at Stephanie's drawing. "What color! What imagination!"

"Oh, Gina! What beautifully rendered leaves!" while looking at Maria's drawing.

This garnered predictable results.

"That's not hers -- that's mine!" "I don't like this!" "But, that's mine!"

"But...it has their name on it," I'd reply every time, then picked a "winner." Inevitably the winners felt guilty for being recognized over a picture they hadn't really drawn, and the real "winner" felt extremely irritated.

I debriefed with every group afterwards -- a necessity, because confusion and hurt feelings happened in every class. I apologized, but explained that this was the point -- that your brain is much more likely to remember something it learns when there is a strong emotion attached, and this was a lesson I never wanted them to forget.

Plagiarism -- the bane of every teacher who teaches resarch, from first grade through post-graduate studies. Now my students from ages 7 through 10 have an extremely clear understanding of the issue. We followed up this activity (which I learned from a training this summer in the IIM research method), with a Brainpop video and circle map about plagiarism.


We began with the end in mind. I want them to be good researchers for life -- which means confronting the issue of plagiarism now, before bad habits form. A little mean? Yes. Are they better researchers for it? Absolutely.

Begin with the End in Mind

Those of you who know Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People know that my title today comes from his second habit. I work on a "Leader in Me" campus, where we take his habits and try to instill them in kids. I know, I know, it sounds like another of those "follow me and I'll show you the way, for only 90 bajillion dollars"types of character programs -- except that it's working. Really well. And the best part is that it's not only character education for kids -- it's working on the grownups, too. In fact, this blog exists because of my personal Wildly Important Goal. (Yes, I speak fluent Edubabble -- stay tuned for more!)

This summer, I also attended a four-day seminar by David Langford, who has researched and shared dozens upon dozens of tools intended to help kids problem-solve and become more intrinsically motivated. Although I had some serious issues with some of his ideas, I really liked his thoughts on having kids determine what an end product will be.  Also, he is a huge fan of sticky notes, and I like sticky notes, too. (Especially when I can color-code them. Hush. It's a teacher thing.)


With the start of my GT pullout classes last week, I wanted to "Begin with the End in Mind" and set the tone for the year. So I took that "quality" idea, reached into my bag of tricks and mixed this together:

For those of you "in the know," you may recognize the Thinking Map in the photo above. I'll spare you the testimonial, but I really like these tools, too. I talked to my students (grades first through fifth) about what quality means, then they brainstormed on their sticky notes how they know they've completed quality projects. They then had to group their sticky notes close to others with similar messages. (My favorite up there came from a first grader: "I wark my but oof.")

I put together the bulletin board with titles after everybody had the opportunity to define quality. Now, it's a visual reminder in my room that we all know quality when we see it -- and, we know how to create it.