Be the change – Page 57

10 Things That Helped Us Love Reading More

January 23, 2013 Pernille Ripp

I just cannot help myself from bubbling with excitement; my students are loving reading this year. And while I wish I had done something revolutionary to create this enthusiasm, I can claim no such feat. Through many small things reading has become our main focus point, our cherished time, the one thing we all look forward to no matter which day it is, no matter the weather, no matter the time. The students just want to read. So what has worked for us? Just a few things:

Share my own reading life. Many smart people have given reasons for why we should share our reading life with our students and they are all so right. To foster a love of reading in our room we have to be readers ourselves. We owe it to the students to know about books and share what we are reading as well.
Stay current. I had really fallen off the wagon of young adult books and it showed. I had no idea what was really being read by students at the moment and could only fake so many book recommendations. Now I am just as excited about the new Scholastic catalog or the random books students bring in; I just cannot wait to read my next book.
Share your books. I have many books in my house that I kept there so that students wouldn’t ruin them, not any more. Books are read by me as fast as I can get through them and then put into the hands of whichever student wants it. They take care of them as well as I can and I have gotten over if a book gets ruined, that just means someone was reading it.
Friday preview. Whenever I get a new book in my hands I do a preview of it; read the first chapter aloud to the class. Whereas I used to just read the back of the book and rattle off a recommendation, reading the first chapter aloud has proven to hook many students. We have 6 books with waiting lists in my room because of this.
Speed book review. Think speed dating but with book recommendations. Half my class sits with their current book and the other half visits each students to hear about their book. Every kid gets a minute or two depending on the day to share their book. This is a great way to spread the knowledge of great books and doesn’t take long.
Using book trailers. I love these ingenius little movies, even if they are poorly made. Now I often start my day showing a book trailer of a new book and it definitely gets the students excited about reading the book. I have also decided that for our genre study the culminating product will be a book trailer. No more reasons to ever even think about doing a book report again!
Read more series. I had never focused on whether I read stand alone book or series but now I realize the power of a great series. You read the first one and get hooked and you have many more books to read. I try to purchase as many quality series as I can and introduce them to the students.
Keep a read next list. In the back of our thoughtful logs we have a “What to read next” list that the students add to whenever they come across a new book. This way even if a book is currently being read they don’t forget about it.
Give them ownership. I don’t force students to read books they don’t like and we discuss what giving a book a fair chance looks like. Students have to know it is ok to abandon a book that is making them dislike reading, why waste their time finishing it? We can do mandatory texts in small group instruction instead.
Talk books. We talk about our books when we are waiting in line, walking to lunch, coming in in the morning and leaving at the end of the day. I am always asking students what they are reading and whether they like it. They love giving me recommendations this way and also showing me how much they read last night.

What have you done to ignite a love of reading in your room?

Be the change, reflection, students

In Which I Stop A Child From Writing

January 16, 2013 Pernille Ripp

image from icanread

He sits and stares into space, pencil in hand. I can see a few words on the paper but not the story he excitedly told me he would write; the scenes he had envisioned while he was sick. Just a few words.

I rack my brain; what happened from our writing conference to now? He couldn’t wait to leave me to write? What roadblock did he face? I finally get it, that roadblock, the reason his pencil is hovering in mid air tentatively waiting? Me. Me and my great advice. Me and my how to’s, should have’s, and don’t forget about this.

So I shout to him; “Hey, did I get you stuck?” He sheepishly grins, “Uhum.” “Oh man, I am sorry…” I answer. (No really, for some reason I have the vocabulary of a 5th grader today). I think for a second and then I say, “Well, don’t listen to me. Go back to what you were doing and write your story. Not mine.” His gets that smile back, turns his back and finally starts to write.

Sometimes even our best intentions, our well thought out writing conferencing are unnecessary at best and downright creativity killing at worst. I am glad I learned that today.

Be the change

EdCamp is Coming, EdCamp is Coming!

January 5, 2013 Pernille Ripp

I have to shout it over the rooftops; EdCamp is coming to Madison, Wisconsin. And why is this such a big deal? Because when I attended my first EdCamp it opened up my eyes to what professional development should look like, it made me realize that others listen when we blog, and that there are more people out there like me.

So I jumped at the chance to be part of the planning team for the official #EdCampMadWi happening February 23rd at Sun Prairie High School. Registration opened 5 days ago and already we are at 50% capacity, so what are you waiting for? Join me and 250 other passionate educators in a free day of discussion, learning, and some really great food.

And if you want to help sponsor us, please email me!

Facebook page

What is EdCamp?

An old post that might help you prepare for EdCamp

Be the change, reflection

The 4 Education Trends I Hope Stay in 2012

December 30, 2012 Pernille Ripp

2012 is coming to a close and along with it, I hope certain trends in education also fade out of our memories. While these may seem innocent enough, I think it is time we make a conscious effort to truly leave them behind.

Teacher bashing. While most people think teacher bashing only happens outside of education, I think it is time we admit how much teacher bashing happens within our own school walls. We have enough outside sources that fight us all, it is time we stop the in-fighting among ourselves.
Automatically viewing all changes negatively. While I know not all changes are created equal, I think it is important we give change a chance, or at least reserve our judgment until we have heard the full idea. Then we can form educated opinions and work from there.
Sharing just how overwhelmed we are at every chance. While venting is healthy, I think when it is all we are focused on it loses its helpfulness. Then we are not releasing our worries but just magnifying them. And yes, I know that being a teacher is super hard right now, I am right there with everyone, but I find when I talk about it all the time that is all I feel and what good does that do? Now sharing our frustrations in an effort to get help, new ideas, or work through – that I can stand behind.
And finally, and this is the one I have to work on in particular, thinking we cannot change anything because we are only teachers. We are stronger than we think and together we can make a difference not only for us as educators, but also for our students. I will continue to fight for the right kind of change every chance I get, I will continue to fight from within, I will continue to stand up to the testing obsessed system because my students deserve it.

If you had not had a chance to read George Couros’ post “3 Ideas That Will Not Change Schools” please do, this post was definitely inspired by that.

Be the change, no homework, reflection

No Homework – 2 Years Later

December 23, 2012 Pernille Ripp

Two years ago, I decided I had had enough of taking my students’ time outside of school. Two years ago I decided that I had had enough with worksheets, meaningless extra assignments, and sending work home with kids well knowing that they probably could not do it. I had had enough of giving kids zeroes and A’s never quite knowing who had done the work or whether they truly “got” it. So I stopped assigning home work or at least tried to. You see, stopping homework in out test obsessed, common core aligned standards based education is not that easy. It looks great on paper and I wish I could say that my students have no homework, but it is not quite true. They have limited homework because there are some things I cannot get around. So here are some lessons I have learned in the last 2 years:

Common core aligned does not mean more focused, it usually means more pages to get through. Our math curriculum went from averaging 3 pages a lesson to 5 – I now rush through them so that students can have some work time in class and I can reteach the concepts I need with small groups but I am sad to say there is almost always math homework at the end of the day. And don’t even get me started on the crazy amount of pages in Lucy Calkins stuff.
We don’t have enough time to read. I used to have a luxurious 30 minutes of independent reading built into my day where students actually just read. I would confer with small groups, read one on one with students and move about leisurely discussing strategies with them. Now we have to have guided lessons, small groups, write about our reading and one-on-one discussions within 45 minutes. I am lucky if my kids get 15 minutes of pure reading time so every week I ask them to read 210 minutes throughout the week. I don’t care what they read, as long as they read, and no, they do not have a log to fill out, we have the honor system.
Kids will struggle with getting things done in time even when you give them classtime. We do spelling as our morning work so every day students have 10 minutes to work on it with being due on Friday. For most students this is no problem and they finish by Wednesday but those that have a hard time focusing, getting started, staying motivated; they still end up with late work. And not just for spelling, when I give students in-class time to finish science responses, do social studies projects and so forth, there are always some that struggle with deadlines. Every week I have this in my classroom and I am still not sure what to do about it.
Taking recess is still against my beliefs. I very, very, very rarely ask a student to stay in during recess and if I do it is to discuss something behaviorally with them. However, once in a while a child gets so behind, so lackadaisical about getting work done and using their time wisely that they have to stay in. So far this year it has happened once and only after I had given the child a whole week to finish the work outside of school. Once they were done with the work though; out they go.
Some parents will want more work, some parents will want less. To no fail some always feel I don’t give their kids enough work to practice their skills or get them ready for middle school, while others still think it is too much. There is no magical way of making everybody happy, but only contuing to communicate what we are doing and why.
I still believe homework is unnecessary but boy it can be hard to get rid of. Our curriculum is written to be extremely difficult to get through in a regular school day so I battle this every day. But it gets better every year as I get wiser and smarter about how my students can accomplish their learning goals and show me they have mastered something. I do not use worksheets outside of class and we do much more project based learning with student and teacher determined learning goals.

I have never lost my belief that homework should be banned in school and as I continue to work through my new curriculum, I maintain that belief. I do not believe that homework is the only way to teach students time management, responsibility, and to show me they have learned something. There are many ways to do that, but to do it well you have to tear apart your curriculum, tear apart your expectations of what a finished product looks like, and tear apart what you think students can accomplish.

If you are looking at going no homework but unsure of what to do, reach out, I will gladly help if I can.

No Homework, No Grades, No Punishment – My Resources

Be the change, reflection

Remember That Kid and His Big Dream

December 21, 2012July 24, 2013 Pernille Ripp

Lat Friday, the day of the awful shootings in Connecticut something quite magical was happening in my classroom. As teachers, this is one of the biggest oxymorons we face; the world may be tragic but inside our walls we have children jumping up and down out of joy. My students did not know what was going on somewhere else in a school similar to ours, all they knew was that Joel Stave, a quarterback for the Badgers was coming to visit them.

Remember that kid and his big dream? Well, because of you he received letters from 3 football players all urging him to continue to push himself and the ultimate prize; the visit. To see his face light up when he got to play football with Joel actually brought tears to my eyes.

As teachers we do everything we can to support our students, to help them believe in themselves, and to push them further, but this one? This one I could not have pulled off if it wasn’t for other teachers that care as much as I do, three of them being Nete Schmidt, John Sterner, and Jason Bretzmann. I promise to pay it forward.

Friday evening I wrote this letter to Joel to make sure he knew what a difference he made:

Hi Joel,

I cannot quite find the words to describe how much your visit meant to my class on Friday. This will be the moment they remember about 5th grade. All weekend I have received emails from parents thanking me and telling me how incredibly excited their kid was.

Friday, with the terrible shooting in Connecticut was a very hard day to be a teacher. We all knew, but had to hide it from our students. The school was actually in lock down mode when you got there and no kids were allowed on the computers as we tried to shield them from the news. Your visit meant that my kids had the best day possible and for that I will ever be grateful.

I spoke to your student manager about how big of a deal you coming was and he commented that he forgets how much people look up to you because he sees you on a regular basis. To my kids, you are the biggest role model they have ever met and the way you were with them showed your genuine heart. Perhaps when you retire from football you should consider becoming a teacher – it is horribly paid in money, but soulfilling in experiences.

Whatever happens to you, you should know that you matter. And how you are matters. Thank you for taking time out to see us. Best of luck to you, you will have 20 diehard fans rooting for you in the Rosebowl.

Thank you everyone; you matter.