Are you randomly acting kind?

I was flipping through my Bloglovin blogs to put them here on my *own* new blog!  And I looked at one of my favorites, The Corner on Character, and she has a great post on MLK and RAK!

Look at my little About Me blurb.  See how I talk about Social and Emotional?  Yet, my blog is all about RTI and reading?  Whattttt?

So I got inspired to write about our Secret Wolves.

Right before Christmas, I signed up to participate in Secret Santa at my school.  I had the BEST Secret Santa.  She remembered me almost daily, sometimes with just something little like a note to take care of myself.  But the BEST thing she gave me was randomly during math class (I teach third grade), one of the ladies from the kitchen came in with a cup of coffee!  French Vanilla, cream, no sugar.  And I already had a cup (or two) of coffee by then, but it was just so perfect, I was blown away. Some presents are silly, like little Santa-shaped stuff that everyone seems to have (or can easily pick up at Wal-Mart).  Some presents are delicious but generic (who DOESN'T like chocolate) because you don't always know the person you chose, so you guess to be safe.  But a cup of coffee, just the way I like it. It blew me away.  (She also gave me other awesome and thoughtful treats like a picture frame, fancy soap, and some decorations!  She's super like that!!)

I said to myself, that's it, we're doing it in class.  I don't believe in celebrating holidays in school.  Sharing about them and celebrating them are two different things in my opinion.  I love when kids share about themselves, including any holidays they participate in.  So I didn't want to do Secret Santas, I wanted kids to be nice.  I've done this in the past, but not so "formally".  We are the Golden Wolves (kids chose the name and the color!), so we became Secret Wolves (they chose the name).  Each week on Monday they pick a name out of a bag, I write it down, and on Fridays they try to guess who picked them.  And what do they do all week?

They are nice.

Yep, that's it!  They were way too obvious the first week, so they got sneakier.  They started telling friends to tell friends nice things.  They started being nice to several people at once to throw them all off the scent.  Prrrretty sneaky, huh?

Then the reveal.  Fridays we gather together and I go down the list of names, giving each kid the chance to guess who picked them.  I ask (and here's one of my favorite parts of all of this), "Student, who was nice to you this week?" and he or she guesses a name.  I say, "Wow, Guessed name, I bet that feels good to be noticed for being nice.  Did you pick him/her?" and if they did, they come to me and get a sticker to give to their Secret Wolf.  If it wasn't them, I say, "They were nice to you, but they won't give you a sticker!  Who will give them a sticker?" and the person who chose them comes to me to get the sticker.  I love the smiles on everyone's faces.  They smile if they got picked, they smile if they "tricked" their Secret Wolf.  They smile when they are reminded of how nice they were during the week.

Try it!  If you don't have class mascots, you could do "Secret Friends".  Goes great with Random Acts of Kindness that I've done in the past.  No prizes, just smiles.

Nice.

Notice and Note Planning

For the first time, I've been creating things for use with Notice and Note for others to download on Teachers pay Teachers.  It's pretty surreal.  I know the negative opinions out there, and I figure I'm doing work for myself that others may appreciate, and I'm making it just that much nicer because it's "for sale" -- and I'm doing it on my own time at home anyway, not at school or on school equipment.

The reason?  Because of love for a book.  Notice and Note.

I can't say enough how much I love this book.  For starters, I love the philosophy behind it.  The authors believe that students should be kind, thinking citizens.  They don't just think they should know reading strategies, even though this is a book all about reading strategies.  The purpose behind education is to create a society that is functional and democratic.  I agree!  Until I read this book, I didn't realize how important it was for me to agree with the underlying philosophy of the authors of pedagogical manuals.  I used to think about the philosophy when I was doing my masters, then I got in the classroom and was worried about day-in day-out teaching, whatever "works".  Now in the middle of a major shift in instructional practices, I feel like I'm swimming and need a life preserver to grab, and as I'm looking around for something to grab, I read this and felt like I could finally take a deep breath, fill my lungs, and feel safe.

I read the beginning, answered their questions for myself, agreed with their basic philosophy, then read on to the practical how-to's.  I was hooked!!  I realized that the signposts, spots that readers naturally notice when they are reading, are the perfect place to show young, inexperienced, and struggling readers.  Giving them generalizable questions to ask themselves will help them as they read other books on their own, and will show them the cues they never really grasped no matter how often they heard it in class about making a prediction or an inference.

The magic of this book is that when they taught the signposts, they saw the students naturally begin to use reading strategies as they read.  That doesn't mean I don't want to teach strategies, but I wanted a more natural feeling.  I read the book over winter break and when we got back in January, I knew I had to break out the signposts during my read aloud.  It was just so.... natural!  All of a sudden, the character did something so weird we all looked at each other surprised and I pulled up my presentation I had already created on the whiteboard, passed out reading logs, and had the kids fill out the unexpected plot sequence, why it was so strange, and what that made us think was about to happen. They got it!!  I also have plans for teaching this in small groups, especially as follow-up and for struggling readers.  So far, though, it has been whole group to introduce the basic function of the signposts.

Another thing I love about the book is their belief in the role of talk.  Teacher talk has a very important place, but in order for us as humans to learn, we have to ask the questions.  So no matter how good our questions are to our students, if we want them learning, we need to start giving them the power to ask their own questions.  Today I created a PDF to plan close reading lessons that lead to students creating their own text-dependent questions.  They read the passage over while the teacher reads it out loud and simply mark places they are confused by.  Then they read again by themselves, this time noting why they were confused or what their questions are.  In the whole group, students share their questions out loud and students decide which ones are the most important question and try to answer them in groups of 2 or 3, again reading through the text to find answers.  After this, they come back in the whole group to share their thinking, after having read the text three separate times and discussed and asked questions.  Wow!  So if you'd like a copy of my planning sheet with student response log, please visit my TpT shop.  (It's free!)

Preview of the Planning and Student Response Sheets

Please join my discussion and comment on my posts.  I'm LOVING this book and I'd LOVE to hear from you!!!  And if you haven't read the book yet, DO SO!!!!

Notice and Note question 4

Intellectual Communities was an extremely short, yet meaningful.

I loved how this chapter compared our schools to profitable corporations and talked about how measuring success on a test may seem like measuring monetary profit, yet it falls short.  We measure success by this test (usually just one!) that then accordingly assigns worth to the student and the teacher and ultimately the school.  One test?  One method?  On one day or week?  How can this be reliable?

We need to create intellectual communities in our schools, places in which students are motivated to talk and think.  That's where they formulate their opinions and deepen their thinking.  I agree!!!

Next chapter: talk.  My favorite!!!