TCI Blog

This is the first in a two-part article about back to school night. I’m presenting a teacher’s perspective and Traci will respond with a parent’s perspective. We hope you get some good ideas and share your own best practices.

As students are returning to school this week and next, many parents are gearing up to attend back-to-school nights with their children. Perhaps even more important than the first day of school for some, back-to-school events are great opportunities for teachers and students to meet and greet in a more personal, informal setting. First impressions are important for both parties involved!

I always have felt like the classroom should be ready for students even if the event is held before school starts. As teachers, we expect our kids to come to class prepared, so if at all possible our classrooms should be prepared for this night. At the secondary level I have always tried to have my syllabus handy to share with parents who attend. If my students have their schedule in hand that evening, it is nice to walk them through it (time permitting), show them a map of the school, and encourage them to walk through their day as it will be the day school begins to get a feel for the time needed to reach each class, etc. This allows them to start planning at what points in the day they can work in locker visits and restroom stops, and where they have spare time to socialize without being tardy. I think sometimes parents do not realize that secondary teachers value meeting you just as much as elementary teachers value meeting parents of the little ones.

Elementary back to school nights tend to have a grand feeling about them. Young students are still excited about school, and often excited about back-to-school night as well. Best practices for elementary teachers will always include passing out the all-important forms for buses, medical releases, etc. I like thinking outside the box for the young students and making it a bit more engaging for them. Scavenger hunts to discover key locations/things in the classroom or even in the building are fun ways for students to become more familiar with their new surroundings. If parents are filling out forms while students sit and wait, it’s great to have something to keep the students occupied. Having centers prepared for the evening is a great way to keep them busy—books, coloring pages, and for upper el questionnaires so that the teacher can learn a bit about the child before the year gets underway.

Let’s learn from one another. Just what are the expectations of the parent and the teacher at these initial meetings? Do students have expectations as well?

 Becky Suthers has been a national trainer for TCI for seven years. She recently accepted a unique teaching job that was all the talk at the TCI Leadership Conference. At a time when most classrooms are exploding with students, Becky’s classroom has the opposite problem. She’ll be blogging for us regularly to gather your wisdom, share her stories, and give us all a good chuckle!

The entire population of Becky's class.

Help!!

I am in need of some collective brain power. Put your thinking caps on ladies and gentlemen, because this is a doozie! I am a firm believer in the TCI Approach. I have seen firsthand the success students can have when this approach is used in classrooms. Teaching any other way is not an option for me.  However, this year, I am going to have to be extra creative to fit my students’ needs.

My family and I moved back to the area where I grew up and I took a job in a small district in the Texas Panhandle. When I say small, I mean VERY small. I only have three students. Three girls. That’s right, three!!!! I am pretty excited though, because last week after enrollment, there were only two on my list of 5th graders. You can imagine how excited everyone was when the third girl showed up today. OK, by everyone, I mean me and the original two girls in my class.

This is definitely a first for me. How can I still incorporate the Six Powerful Teaching Strategies in my everyday lessons? Even my normal first day routine felt a little off. Do you have any idea how fast icebreakers go when you only have three students and two of them have known each other since Kindergarten? Forget about doing the Appointment Calendar for pairing students! These girls will unfortunately have the same partners all year long.

We will be using America’s Past for social studies and I have the Skill Builder lessons figured out. Pretty sure we can handle that. As for the rest of the strategies, I am counting on ideas from my colleagues to bring social studies alive to my students. My three girls deserve to experience these great lessons. This is a fantastic opportunity for them, as well as me, and I want to make the most of it.

What advice would you give me on how to do Visual Discovery Lesson 5: Early English Settlements? Who will they be presenting to? Me? With only three students, is that enough for a good act-it-out?
I will be updating everyone periodically to let you know how we are doing, what is working, and what isn’t. Any and all ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Pardon my split personality disorder in this post as you may hear my social studies consultant voice and my parenting voice as well. Not that the responses or comments should differ, however…

I was a bit bothered recently as I checked over my daughter’s homework assignments for correctness and questioned her for understanding (the teacher in me). I realize that while unfortunate, a growing number of lower elementary classrooms are finding less and less time for social studies instruction (thank you TCI for providing social studies and language arts objectives in your new programs). Is it appropriate to then address the content through page after page of homework that consists of simply reading 11 pages of text at the lower elementary level? As teachers and parents I believe our goal regardless of the lesson or life-topic should be understanding and retention long after the assessment. Whether it be pages of reading or a series of worksheets I’m not so sure either of these strategies promotes a homework time conducive to retention of the material and definitely does nothing to foster a love of learning in a 7 year old. Am I wrong for feeling that if content is mastered during the school day then a homework assignment is not necessary? As a teacher I have not been known for giving a great deal of homework assignments, but my students were consistently successful on both school and state assessments. I realize some parents feel that their child may be missing something if they do not bring home a backpack full of books so heavy their little backs give out, but I pose this question…might they be missing something during the DAY if they are bringing home this amount of homework? I truly believe that homework should have a clear purpose and shouldn’t be assigned if as a teacher you do not have time to provide feedback to the students on their work, regardless of the grade level. If daily instruction is diverse, incorporates various teaching strategies and is differentiated, I place my bets that students will master the content during that block of time from bell to bell. I’d rather my kids have some time after school for exercise and play since areas like physical education are facing cuts across the nation!

What do you think as a teacher and as a parent? Is homework necessary at all grade levels? How much is too much, and what kinds of assignments are meaningful in social studies instruction?

Learn how to create a cooperative and productive classroom environment!

This 30-minute training walks you through a simple 10-step process that you should use during the first few weeks of school: Creating a Cooperative, Tolerant Classroom (video).

In the training, Deanna references some great handouts from Bring Learning Alive!, TCI’s methods book. You may want to download the document below and follow along during the video. And even if you don’t have time to watch the whole training, definitely pull out some of the student handouts to use!

Written Instructions and Handouts: 10 Steps for a Cooperative, Tolerant Classroom (PDF)

Be on the lookout for other trainings coming soon under ”Professional Development” on TeacherGenius. TeacherGenius contains tons of great teaching tips, videos, enrichment resources, and links to useful websites. Have a wonderful year!

When I saw this Dilbert in Sunday’s paper, I chuckled thinking about TCI strategies that put students into groups and pairs. Done without purpose or haphazardly, putting students into groups is ineffective. Give them roles, a purpose, and juicy content, and students can soar working with others. After all, Cohen’s theory of cooperative interaction leading to increased learning gains is a foundation of the TCI Approach!

One of our favorite ways to pair students is with appointment calendars or “meet me at” documents. Early in the semester, have students make appointments or agree to meet classmates at the places on the document.  Then, when you need to pair up students for a Skill Builder or other activity, have them meet their appointment for 3:00 or the Sydney Opera House.

I’ve attached a document with several examples for elementary and secondary. If you have another great idea for pairing students, click “comment” and tell us about it. Better yet, submit it to TCI’s TeacherGenius.

Appointment_Documents

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

One of the six strategies for teaching content with TCI materials is called the Social Studies Skill Builder.  These types of lessons are great to get students rapidly moving and engaged into content while at the same time they concentrate on skill development.  Visit our TeacherGenius section to download a great student-management resource for skill-builders posted by teacher and administrator Dawn Bishop.  You can even see an extended video segmant on the skill-builder strategy modeled by veteran TCI Expert, Sangita Patel here on our YouTube channel.  You can also click here to get a sample section from our methods book detailing how you can get the most out of the Social Studies Skill Builder.

All of TCI’s programs K-12 have lessons which use Social Studies Skill Builders.  I invite you to try an engaging TCI lesson like this in your class.  Visit http://info.teachtci.com/trial/ to qualify for your 30-day trial.

TCI is creating a brand new online program called World Cultures Alive!. If you teach about cultures around the world (including their geography, history, economy, government, and culture), you’ll want to be on the lookout for this exciting new set of customizable lessons.

And right now, we need your help! Which of the two program designs below do you prefer? Please vote by clicking on this link: http://offers.teachtci.com/how-do-i-look.

Which look is the best?

Check the TCI Blog often for updates on the program and how YOU can contribute to its development. Thanks for your input and we look forward to working with you all!

Basic Training 2010_LessonD

This is the last of a multi-lesson unit called Basic Training: Starting the School Year Right.  In this lesson, students learn how some simple classroom procedures can save loads of instructional time.  Students learn an attendance procedure as they “check in” daily and also time themselves getting into groups playing “Desk Olympics.”

I’ll be the first to admit I hate icebreakers when I’m half asleep during an early morning summer staff development session. But I’ll also admit they usually wake me up and get me to interact with other teachers even though I’m not quite feeling up to snuff. So when I started using icebreakers and team builders in my class, I was relatively surprised to find that they are highly successful teaching strategies. By taking a few minutes to set the stage, students were better able to focus on the content they needed to learn.  

In fact, icebreakers and team builders are critical if you’re planning on using hands-on, active social studies lessons this year! (Obviously ignore the rest of this post if you only lecture.) You can’t expect students to work together if you don’t create a classroom environment that fosters collaboration. That’s why I was so excited to see Lynne’s professional development video training here: Top 10 Icebreakers and Team Builders. 

TCI's TeacherGenius: Professional Development

In this quick professional development training, you’ll find quirky original icebreakers like “Snowball Fight” (1:15 into the video) and tried-and-true classics like “Two Truths and a Lie” (2:35). You can find the student handout for the “Autographs” icebreaker (4:27) in Brian’s awesome lesson plan called Getting Started and Getting to Know Each Other. Share it with all the new (and not-so-new) teachers you know!

And before you do your first group project of the year, you absolutely must try my favorite team builder called “Lost on the Moon” (13:10). This team builder proves to groups that they DO need each other and that they are ”smarter” as a group than as individuals. I used it for years in all my classes and only once did I have an individual student outperform the group.

Definitely check out this video and other great trainings in the new Professional Development section of TCI’sTeacherGenius! TeacherGenius contains tons of great teaching tips, videos, enrichment resources, and links to useful websites.

Basic Training 2010_LessonC

This is the third in a multi-lesson unit to open the school year. Students explore their learning styles and the learn importance of teamwork as they create a 60-second commercial. Students use a variety of video and web tools for this lesson.