Breaking Writer's Block

The week before Spring Break, I was in tears. So was one of my fourth-graders.

“Just write it! It doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to be there,” I said, trying again – unsuccessfully – to break through his block.

“I CAN’T,” he said back. “I CAN’T put that sentence in my story. It’s BORING.”

“But it doesn’t matter,” I replied. “It doesn’t matter if it’s boring, it’d be done – and you can move on.”

“I CAN’T,” he insisted, tears leaking down his cheeks.

Frustrated, tired, heartbroken for this kid, I let it go. At least I could tell his teacher he tried, that he wanted to write – he just couldn’t get out of his own head long enough to get it on the paper.

I went home that day feeling like a failure. I had tried every trick I knew – thinking maps, foldables, graphic organizers – and they hadn’t worked.  Oh, they’d worked a bit – he had a paper, but it wasn’t finished. And it wouldn’t be. And the state test in writing was in a week.

Over dinner, I asked my husband – a high-school English teacher – for advice.

First, he called me stupid – “Not you,” he insisted. “Your approach. Don’t you think every other teacher has already told him that?”

“Ok, dear,” I said, my teeth a little gritted. “What would you do?”

He talked about sculpting, and about appreciating writing – even state-test-practice-so-boring-I-want-to-poke-my-eyes-out-with-a-spork writing – as art.

“You have to appreciate that to him, he’s making art. So you talk about art. A sculptor doesn’t make a statue right away – he has to work with the clay. Pinch it, scrape it, carve it, until it’s finally a beautiful sculpture. Writing is the same – he has to understand that he will never get the story out of his head perfectly. He has to get clay on the page, take the words out, then work with them until it’s right. But he can’t work with them until they’re on the paper – he has to put clay on the page.”

I nodded, but was skeptical. This made sense to me, but would the analogy click with a 9-year-old?

I figured I’d try, so last week – three days before the big test – I talked to my student. I talked about sculpting, and working with clay.

It was classic.

His eyes widened, his eyebrows went up. “Oooooooooh,” he said. “You’re talking about my writing.”

“What connection did you just make?” I asked (it’s best to check with GT kids – they can make some extremely…interesting…connections).

“You mean, I have to plan, then write my rough draft, then my final draft. And I can keep working on it – that it doesn’t have to be perfect right away.”

I nodded. “You’re putting clay on the page,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Clay on the page.”

Then a day later he wrote – a full page – on his own. In one sitting.

“This,” he said, after proudly marching down to my room to share, “is just my ROUGH draft.”

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.

Coding with Kids

I know I'm just the latest in a very long line of educators jumping on the coding bandwagon, but I'm hooked. Coding -- computer programming -- is being called a "New Literacy" for our kids to learn. It's also really fun.

This week, our First Lego League teams dived into building and programming their robots -- a little behind, I know, but we're rookies. Kids who have had no exposure to programming (and coaches who have had very little), are now expected to create robot that can make its way through a multitude of obstacles and perform a task. Overwhelming? Perhaps a bit (especially for the grownups). But the kids looked up some how-to videos, opened up the program, and dove right in.

Looking ahead, I'm realizing that my younger students really need experience with programming, so when they join FLL in a few years, they will be ready to go (also, it's good for that whole career/future/rest-of-their-life thing).

The upcoming Hour of Code is a great opportunity to kick off some coding projects, which I'll write about here as we do them. For more information -- and a plethora of amazing resources, check out Terri Eichholz's "Engage their Minds" blog or Cristina Popescu's "Think Appy Thoughts."

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?

Putting the "F-word" Back in School

"Oh, your kids really have fun, don't they?"

I've been asked this question, or versions of it, more times than I can count over the past year as a GT facilitator, in tones ranging from wistfulness to sneer. And I reply, "Yes, they do -- and they think hard, too."

Because really, people, what's wrong with a little fun in school?

I'm thinking of this after spending an hour watching my fifth graders just have fun today. We were supposed to teleconference with NASA, but due to technological difficulties, had to reschedule. Which left me a classroom of fifth graders and an unscheduled hour.

Pentago

"Free choice!" I called out, deciding to give them their Christmas present early. They scattered -- LEGOs, chess, marble runs. Some chose new challenges, like Pentago or In a Pickle. Others went to old favorites -- Quoridor and Quirkle.

To be honest, I struggled with this decision -- was I wasting an hour? What would their teachers -- strapped for time with the stress of state testing in three subjects -- say if they found out?

Then I stepped back and just watched. Part of our district's mission statement reads: "...ISD,where we encourage collaboration and communication, [and] promote critical thinking..."

In their play, my students were embracing all three of those district goals. So yes, they were having fun. And thinking -- a lot.

Managing Overload

Do you ever feel like you're on information overload? That so many good ideas have come your way that you just don't know where to look or what to do next?

That's where I am right now.

I work with some amazingly talented, creative, passionate people, who follow the blogs and read the books of other amazingly talented, creative, passionate people.

That much creativity has left my head spinning this week.  I am full of questions: What should I do next with my students?  Am I doing enough? Is that creative enough? Is that really reaching them the way I want it to? Is there enough depth to that assignment? Will that prepare them for life in our fast-paced, changing society? Will they enjoy it? Will I enjoy it? Is this important? Am I doing the important things with them?

I have these precious butterflies (I know, old, tired, rather melodramatic metaphor, but still appropriate), and I don't want to waste a second of the time we spend together.

So, what to do next?

Here are just a few of the ideas that have come my way this week.

From colleagues: Genius Hour, Engineering Mystery Bags, and the most intriguing, Traveling Differentiation Suitcases. (The suitcases are the creation of a fellow GT facilitator. Made from MacBook boxes -- our district has a surplus of the boxes at the moment following computer upgrades -- the suitcases include everything necessary for an advanced lesson for a small number of students. Novel, handouts, instructions, etc. Genius!)

From the web: Coding for kids, books clubs for GT parents, and really, anything that Terry Eichholz writes about.

I'm glad I have a weekend to ponder and digest these ideas...I'm sure something great will come out of the mix.