5/18 Pay It Forward!!!!!

Have I talked about how morning meetings bring people together? They are filled with love and friendship. I beleive my own morning meeting that was held in my college class as a practice session was a fine example of this particular concept. I shall tell you about how it went. 

FIRST! We set up the chairs in a circular shape! 
ALSO! We had a poster on the board that said "Secret Acts of Kindness" and we had five people sign up to share a time where they had either given or received an act of kindness. We also had everyone in the class anonymously write something nice or that they liked about another in the class. 
GREET! Then we had a greeting that is similar to the games "Signs" We each went around the circle and picked our own sign, repeating each persons sign after they did to try to ingrain it in our brains. Then one person starts by doing their sign and then doing someone else's sign. That someone else accept their sign and does a third persons sign. The second person sits down then because they have been greeted. We continued in this manner until everyone had been greeted silently. It was lots of fun picking signs and then giving the signs.
SHARE! We then had five people share the time they had an involvement with a SAK. It was very touching. Some of the things were personal adn others were like someone bought their groceries at the store for them. For each sharing, they were asked about three ish questions or comments about it. It was very touching.
ACTIVITY! Secret Elf. (from the book "99 Activities and Greetings: Great for Morning Meeting" by Melissa Correa-Conolly) We sent one person to the corner, then as a group we said "Elf, elf, there's an elf on my shelf and the elf is..." Then someone would volunteer to be the elf and they would say ina disquised voice "I'm the elf!" the person in the corner would then have three guess as to who is was. It was really fun!
DISCUSSion type thing! Lastly we pulled down the poster and read all of the different things people had said about each other. It was very touching and heart-warming. We talked about paying it forward, where you pass on acts of kindness done to you. We encouraged our class to do so. 

I really had a lot of fun and I felt like everyone in the class also had fun. I learned a lot about my classmates adn felt like it built our community and vocabulary and ideas. I love morning meetings. :)

4/18 New Insights

I've learned some new analogies to apply to the 9 Hallmarks to help us better understand and utilize these classroom differentiation strategies. Remember the definitions I gave a few weeks ago? Well keep those in mind and feel free to reference them. This post is an expansion of those definitions that I learned from my fellow future teachers at school. Here we go:

Hallmarks!

1. A strong link between assessment and instruction. 

A puzzle! You got to get the foundation out there to even start putting the puzzle together. You gotta start somewhere, so you put the edge together. Then you you find all the connections and the links. To put it together. BUT, you have to keep referring back to the picture and the edge and reassessing the whole time to complete it! They are connected!

2. Absolute Clarity about what the teacher wants to know, understand, and be able to do - about what is truly important to learn in this unit. 

The student is blindfolded and the teacher has a map and can see the goal at the end of the maze. The teacher needs move with the student to find the unforeseen circumstances and guide the student to dodge those obstacles! Reach the goal!

3. Shared responsibility for the classroom is between teacher and students in the goal of making it work for everyone. 

Picture a scale. The kind that needs equal weight on both sides to balance. One side is the teachers input, one side is the students. They have to give an equal amount to the learning process!

4. Individual growth is emphasized as central to classroom success.

We are strong as one big link. We have to come together and form a classroom chain with our strengths and weaknesses to keep each other strong, hold each other up.

5. A "way up," unusually through multiple and varied pathways, and never a "way out."

Silly putty! The silly putty is taught a lesson by placing it on a newspaper and it picks up the words and then you need to mold that new knowledge. If you pull to hard, they'll snap!! But if you pull slowly and mend the holes, they'll keep the info!

6. Respectful and engaging work for all students.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference." ~ Robert Frost Different pathways, same end goal. We gotta make those pathways fun and challenging and leveled! 7. Proactive thinking and planning for different pathways.  Going on a road trip. It takes lots of planning, you need a map, start at different places, teacher sees stuff, some are gonna go at a faster place then others! 8. Flexible grouping. A flower garden. For different occasions you'll want different bouquets and flower arrangements! or sometimes you'll want a single rose, etc! 9. Flexible use of time, space, and materials. Bending over backwards and forwards an being willing to change or go to the extreme to get things done!! I am very blessed to be learning in a class filled with all of these geniuses. Their metaphors and connections really helped for the Hallmarks to become real and clear to me. Now I just need to think of my classmates when a particular strategy is mentioned and I know what it is and how to utilize its power. My favorite metaphors would have to be Robert Frost's pathways, the silly putty, and the flower bouquets. They just really hit home with me in their symbolism. I hope these helped you to understand the Hallmarks on a deeper, more personal level as well!!