Inquiry Ideas

Share with us your ideas for inquiry. Write a post with your inquiry questions, a summary of your process, and any other ideas you have on this project.

Maybe we could help each other work through issues in your inquiry. Please feel free to share whatever.

The link to the blog that shared the old children's book is here.

Cooperative Learning

Some of you mentioned that you'd like some ideas or tips for cooperative learning. As an eMINTS Instructional Specialist, I train teachers in using cooperative learning activities as well as use some of the strategies and elements in my own facilitation. From this work and my own experience, I've put together this blog post.

Elements of Cooperative Learning
Depending on who you ask, cooperative learning has four or five elements that should be present every time. Otherwise, it's just group work. I'm focusing on the four elements as pointed out by Kagan.

• Positive Interdependence - "All for one, one for all" sort of describes positive interdependence. This is the idea that if I succeed, you will also succeed. The challenge is in designing lessons or utilizing structures that make this happen. To me, this is the most important aspect of cooperative learning. PI can be supported through team building, common group goals, shared resources, specific roles, and group rewards.
  
• Individual Accountability - Each student is responsible for contributing to the task. That means that each member of a group should have his/her unique portion of a task, not everyone doing the exact same thing. This can be accomplished through assigning individual roles or dividing the content among group members.
• Equal Participation - Each member of a group has equal participation time. This has to be a requirement or expectation built into an activity. Don't let that wallflower sit to the side while others dominate the work.
• Simultaneous Interaction - All students should be visibly engaged at the same time.Faco Reduce the down time and give every group member a specific role to be worked on simultaneously. This will cause your classroom to be noisier than usual, but it's worth it.

Time to Reflect
Although not specified by Kagan, many cooperative learning advocates feel it is imperitive for these strategies to incorporate some sort of group processing. This is a good teaching practice overall. You've got to develop that meta cognition.

Reasons NOT to Use Cooperative Learning
Many teachers have many excuses for not using cooperative learning. However, for every excuse, there is a reasonable response.

• Real World Competition - Teachers feel that students should be able to complete tasks on their own in order to prepare for the real world. While this is partially true, it should also be noted that most jobs require people to work together in collaboration.
• Difficult to Manage - Many feel that it is difficult to manage a noisy room of simultaneous activity. I'd argue that it's not anymore difficult than doing quiet, whole-class, teacher-centered teaching. There are just different strategies that need to be practiced and employed.
• Cooperative Learning Is Overdone - Cooperative groups are not necessary for every assignment. When they are, it rarely feels rewarding. Plus, instructors often leave out any development of collaborative skills. So, teachers avoid cooperative learning all together. The truth is that your students need a variety of approaches and perspectives, cooperative learning being one of them.
• Mediocrity Rules - Teachers are often concerned that their higher-achieving students can be dragged down by cooperative groups. However, the best way to learn content and processes is often to teach it to others. Also, cooperative groups allow these students to learn and develop other skills such as leadership and collaboration. Every student can benefit from that.

Factors to Consider
When using cooperative groups, there are several factors to consider. It's not just about putting students into groups and letting them go.

• Homogeneous vs. Heterogeneous Grouping - Do you want all the students in a group to be alike in some way or do you want to mix abilities and perspectives?
• Size - Typically, groups of two, three, or four work best.
• Grouping Method - Depending on the task, there can be times for random grouping, but purposefully grouping students can meet very specific goals.
• Student Preferences - In order to avoid conflict or time off task, considering student preferences can really help. Don't always pair the Hatfields and McCoys or BFF's for the best results.
• Strengths and Needs - Find skills that compliment or fill in holes with your student groups.

Social Skills
Students do not always know how to cooperate or interact with their peers. We have to teach social skills. For cooperative learning to work, students must know how to treat each other in a proper manner. The time that is saved by not having to put out "fires" is worth the time spent teaching students how to interact.

Cooperative Learning Structures
Below are a few websites with structures that have the elements and ideas I've shared in this post. Also, I've included a link to my Delicious bookmarks for cooperative learning to fill in any gaps.

• Cooperative Learning Structures - This site divides the structures into two categories: Basic and Advanced. For those who are just trying out cooperative learning or aren't sure of its benefits, try the basic structures. The advanced structures are not difficult. They just require more of a commitment.
• Kagan Cooperative Learning - This resource is a collection of Kagan strategies that include a description of the strategy, steps, and tips for implementation.
• My Delicious Bookmarks - These are bookmarks of resources that support cooperative learning in the classroom.
  

Boy Trouble

Below is a link that relates directly to many of the topics discussed in our group. It is from Instructor Magazine published by Scholastic. Any thoughts on it?

Link

(I fixed it.-Zac)

You're the man

You want me to WRITE!?!?! Ahh Maaan!

I have only read through chapters 1 and 2 and so far I am not shocked or surprised. Boys are struggling in the current, traditional classrooms. Writing is boring.

As Kindergarten teachers, we continuously compete for children's attention with Bakugan and Kung Fu Panda among others. One observation is that I can't help but notice how the kiddos (mainly boys) would rather spend more time named "Anakin" or "The Red Ranger" than answering by their given name. Heck, one boy knows all the characters in Star Wars, but after 114 days of school cannot name the other boys in the classroom. There seems to be a disconnect here. Could it be that children are more and more being introduced to the outside world through electronic media rather than face to face socialization. In a movie or a video game, effortless (perceived) connections are made with the characters. Is it any surprise that boys are giving up and retreating from uneasy situations resulting from peer encounters, especially when teachers (like myself) are telling them to quit playing rough and settle down?

In a nutshell... if it is so easy to not write and have fun, why bother? How can we make writing attractive to young boys when other stimuli are so readily available?

Continuing research

I will be using the same research question I used last year.

Does Having a Male as a Teacher Change Students Perceptions?

I think it will be interesting to see how the perceptions of students who have had a male for the entire school year compare to those students who only had me for 16 weeks.

Boy Writers

While reading the book, "Boy Writers", I noticed a real interesting quote. "Girls tend to 'attack' a writing assignment and get it done quickly. Boys, on the other hand, tend to ponder and fester about what they are going to write." I'm not real sure about all classrooms, but this is definitely not the case in my student teaching classroom. Sure, there are girls who are good writers and get theirs done quickly. However, there is a greater number of boys in the classroom who have written some fantastic pieces thus far and are more creative. Most of the boys jump right in and can write for hours. I think its all about the teacher's personal perceptions of what their students writing is to look like. We can't be biased about what writing needs to look like when the student's are expressing themselves. Let them be creative, school appropriate of course, and express themselves as writers!

Who the Hell Was That Guy?

   So, as it turns out, I am not the only male in my grade level in my district.  How exciting!  I met two others today at a district meeting.  This was quite surprising since this is our third or fourth meeting of the year.  One of them is a student teacher, and I wish him all the best.  The other one, is a first year teacher.  As I said, this was the first time I've seen him.  As it turns out, he hadn't cleared space is his schedule to make it before.  (Hearsay from his co-worker: "What are they (the district) going to do?  Fire me?")  Later in the day, I had another session with him where he sat in the back and declined to participate ("No, I'm good") when asked.

   I don't think I've ever been more upset at a person's attitude.  There's already a huge stigma on male teachers and the last thing I want is for one of our own to degrade our image.  I'm not the best teacher.  I never will be.  However, I know that I want to be a better teacher than I am now.  It's going to take work... lots of work.  "You should never stop learning" is a cliché, but it became a cliché because there's near inarguable truth to it.  I'm a huge advocate of getting more men in the classroom, as you could guess, but I'm a fan of getting the right men in the classroom.  Maybe he's not a lost cause, but the passive-aggressive stance that he's taken towards his professional development thus far, doesn't instill confidence in me.  I hope he can turn it around and become an example of what a great male teacher can be.

Thanks for the info...

Yesterday, one of my students decided that during silent independent reading time that it was the perfect time to tell me that he was "becoming a man". He walked up to me and said "Guess what? I just got my first bit of peach fuzz!" as he points to his crotch...Usually, I'm pretty good on my feet, but I had no response but "Thanks for that information." after what seemed like a long hesitation on my part. All I have to say is wow.

He doesn't have a father in his life, he just recently moved in with a stepfather, so I guess I'm glad he feels comfortable or close enough to me to want to share something like that, but...

I'm Always the Exception!!

I'm sorry but I could speak to so much on this. Many thanks to Zac for finding this. This is the most ungrounded piece of work I have ever seen. I almost didn't get past slide number 8 which basically said boys can't multitask. But then I went on to slide 30 that said to not talking to boys about feelings. This is the kind of rhetoric used in society that "trains" our boys to act the way they do!

Anyway, keeping it short and sweet. It is funny that this came up, because the thought that I had for my post to the blog was that as I was looking over behavior issues and academic achievement among my students for upcoming parent teacher conferences (12 boys 13 girls) it came to my attention that the boys in my classroom are doing quite well, 11 of the 12 boys are reading at the level they need to be (no exaggeration, don't ask me how this is! The one below grade level is an ELL student!) and the discipline problems are very minimal. Whereas I have 3 girls that get pulled for Title I reading, get pulled for a seperate group during Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) and 3 that are constantly in safe seats or buddy rooms!

I'm not making any conclusions from this, I'll leave that to you. But it seems to me that Ms. Elliot may want to do a little more research of her own before she makes these gross generalizations about boys.

Sorry, I know, longer than you or I probably wanted!

Teaching Boys

As a student teacher, I don't have a lot of experience teaching in general. Thus far, I have not noticed any differences in teaching boys than in girls. In the classroom I am teaching in, there two chronic behavior problems in the classroom, one being a boy and one a girl. All of the students appear to be eager to learn and willing to participate in all activities equally. Hopefully, as the semester progresses and I gain more experience in the classroom, I will be able to share more experiences with teaching boys.

Happy Milk Day!!

I am happy to say that no parent questioned why the students were out of school for "Milk Day"! If you don't know what that means feel free to ask...

ER

I do not know if anyone watched ER from Nov 20 (If you ahve not you can still check it out on NBCWebsite). On this particular epsiode there was a guy there with his wife and his wife's brother. The wife was having some problem and the doctors noticed something wrong with the husband and long story short it came out that the husband was a suspected child molester, although he was never convicted. Guess what this guys profession was....you guessed it a a male ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER....out of all the jobs why didit have to be a elem teacher?

MMEET Scholars Wordle

Below is a Wordle image. Wordle takes the content of a piece of writing or an entire website and creates a visual aid of word choice within the writing. The larger the word, the more often it is used. I will post updated Wordles periodically as we post on this blog.

You may notice that words like "school" and "teachers" jump out right away. That's not surprising. What was surprising is the word "dress" taking such a prominent role, suggesting that many of our posts have had to do with image or appearances.

Conspicuously missing from the top 50 words is "gender." We still haven't reached a point where gender can readily be used to describe our identities or roles in the schools we work. Maybe if I expand the word count, we'll find a better representation of the words we choose.


Update: I did try it again using more words...

title="Wordle: MMEET2"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/315849/MMEET2"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

Number the Stars, scene 1

I was at the TRYPS play, "Number the Stars" last Friday and I was getting my kids settled into their seats and a woman approached me from another school district. She asked, "Does Grant only recruit male teachers?" We had three there that day, my co-teacher in the fifth grade and one of our fourth grade teachers. I said no, but I guess we should. Ha! Ha! She then proceded to give me the token response, "That is SO wonderful! We need more men in education." I told her that was true and then got back to watching out for my students. I am very lucky to teach at my school. It has been positive for so many reasons, one of which is the company of men that I am able to keep.

My life is better as a video game

I had a few minutes during my kindergartners' nap time and checked out an article on FOXNEWS.COM. In short, a boy's father realized a change in his son's personality and behavior after long hours playing "Call of Duty 4." As a result, Dad removed his xbox console. His son left on bicycle and was found dead in a corn field in Barrie, Ontario.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,448026,00.html

How can video games wrap up our boys so tightly that it constricts the role of the real world?

Who's at fault here? How can uninformed adults in a child's life be enlightened to the idea that giving that child the world can be the death of him?

I guess that is all I have to say.

You must be the man with all the power...

It seems as if the school year is flying by, but there is still so much left to do. October brings the great sensation homecoming, orange, brown, and yellow leaves, colder weather and of course parent teacher conferences. This is the time of year when teachers "dress up" when they come to school apparently to show the parents "Look at me, I'm a professional" this may sound a bit cynical but....oh well. This thought actually came about as I was typing and trying to introduce the real reason I got on here, but I the two thoughts tie together.

This morning as I was making some last minute copies for the day, I walked into the teachers lounge, an older man was sitting at one of the tables, I had never seen him before. I said "good morning" and he responded with the same. He then went on to say "White shirt and tie. You must be the man with all the power." I jokingly said "Only in my classroom." We had a brief chuckle and I left. I have the very bad habit of forgetting things so I had to go back to the lounge to get more papers that I had printed, the same man was sitting in the room and said to me "Oh I get it, parent teacher conferences are today and you want to look your best. I know how it is, my wife brings out the heels whenever this time rolls around." I simply stated "No. Parent/teacher conferences has nothing to do with my dress, I wear this everyday. It doesn't bother me at all." Finally he says "Oh, so when you get that administrative job you'll be comfortable dressing like this." I simply said "yep" and left.

There's nothing really new here, we've heard and have probably discussed this before, but this one particularly bothered me. I thought back to something that I said to my students yesterday when they bombarded me with the question, "Can we clean our desk out?" I asked them "Why? So your parents can think that you keep a clean desk? Why not let them see how messy you keep your desk? Why now do you care how clean your desk is? Why not keep it clean everyday?" To some degree this is how I feel about the wife of the man from this morning and some of the teachers in my school. All of a sudden it is so important for you to dress the professional part, but what about the other 175 days of the school year? Why is it so important to dress like a professional for the 6 days during conferences? Why not let the parent see you in your usual appearance?

I'm just putting that out there. I know it's long. Sorry. Please comment and educate me on this topic. Teaching is a profession and teachers want to be treated like professionals, and I do feel that dress is a certain part of that. Not only does it put the appearance out there, but it also places a certain professional "air" within yourself. At least for me it does.

Not sure what to do...

Just a quick note about what happened during our writing time. I had the students write about what they would do on a rainy day. I then collected their journals and read them aloud and had the class applauded in different ways after reading them. Long story short, I got to one story that said something like "I would play games and read books. Then I would call my teacher and have a sleepover..." This was written by a girl (the students didn't know that) but I felt like I had to immediately address this and say that my number is unlisted, no student has ever called me, I don't have sleepovers, etc. This just put a little uneasy feeling on me and now I'm wondering if I should make a copy of it and discuss this with my principal just to cover myself. Any thoughts.

Hey Dad!!

No it's not what you think...I am not a new father. Although congrats to Zac on his new found joy in life! The purpose of this blog is to just quickly mention how first of all teachers in general are taking on the role (whether voluntarily or not) of the parent but in this case, I have been the "den father" (if such a thing exists) at my school. Just this morning this 5th grade students were campaigning for vairous positions on student council. I young gentleman decided to wear a suit but instead of asking his dad or mom (who are very active in his life) to tie it, he left home with it untied and asked me to do it. Maybe he thought or knew that his mom or dad didn't know how to tie a tie, maybe he liked the kinds of knots I tie when I wear a tie (everyday). I don't really know and I guess this sort of thing is to be expected, not that I have a problem with it.

On a totally unrelated note, I just thought of the morning when the Title I reading specialist and the special ed teacher were switching rooms because of the large enrollment in special ed students this year. An email went out asking anyone to help move some things to get it done faster, we were told that all big things would be moved by maintainence so we only had to move small things like books. When I volunteered I knew I was being recruited to move bigger things. Not that I have a problem with this, I just noticed that the mini refrigerator, the computer, a book shelf and a few other large items needed to be moved this morning. Guess who got to move them...

Sorry, this turned out to be longer than I had originally thought, but freewriting for me is lilke opening up the flood gates, so that's it for now.

It's Pat!

Sometimes things are just different.
I have a young autistic boy this year. He's high functioning, but one of the things that come along with the diagnosis is a lack of social skills. This was made evidently clear to me yesterday when I sent him to the bathroom on his own from computer lab. About one minute later, I realized that this could be a mistake. The last time I sent him by himself, I found him 7 minutes later with his pants around his ankles, butt cheeks pressed against the wall, and hands over his crotch, all while singing "This Little Light of Mine" and bobbing up and down. Needless to say, he's had a six year-old chaperone since then.
So, back to yesterday, I dart down to the restroom to check on him. He's in one of the stalls, grunting. Next, he tells the toilet paper, "It's time to go to work." So, I go back to the room and send someone down to check on the boy. Then he comes strolling into the room. Doing the math in me head, I think that there was definitely not enough time elapsed to finish "putting the toilet paper to work," wash hands, and walk back to the classroom.
"Hey, Buddy," I say, "Did you wash your hands?"
"Oh," he says, "I forgot," and he walks back to the door. "Thanks!" and then he patted me twice on the crotch as he strolled down to the bathroom.
That's right. He gave me the One Handed Poo Pat on the Crotch.
I don't think this really has much to do with MMEET, other than, I may need witnesses when I give my deposition.
Keep vigilant.

My Excuse

I know that this has little or nothing to do with MMEET, but I did have a reason for missing our first meeting...

Lucia1 from comoprozac on Vimeo.