2nd day with BorderLand teachers: features of high engagement classrooms, AFL, increasing student talk in classes, providing choice.

1. It’s All about Thinking:
teaching reading and writing
across the grades, within
different disciplines, throughout
the day
Borderland, Gr 6-12
March 21, 2016
Faye Brownlie
www.slideshare.net/fayebrownlie/borderland2

2. Learning Intentions
• I have a be@er idea of what counts in
adolescent literacy teaching.
• I have a plan to try something that is different
for me.
• I know the assessment FOR learning strategies
and can find evidence of them in my teaching.

3. • Increasing disciplinary understanding
• Increasing student talk Jme
• Hear – speak – read – write
• Constrained vs unconstrained reading focus

4. Features of High-Engagement Learning
Environments
• available supply of appropriately difficult texts
• opJons that allow students more control over
the texts to be read and the work to be
accomplished
• the collaboraJve nature of much of the work
• the opportunity to discuss what was read and
wri@en
• the meaningfulness of the acJviJes
• Allington & Johnston, 2002; Presley, 2002; Wigfield, 1997; Almasi & McKeown, 1996;
Turner, 1995

5. • JusJn Trudeau
• Barack Obama
• Vladimir PuJn
• Wab Kinew
• Marine Le Pen
• Hilary Clinton

6. Find someone who…
Yannie gets a loan for a new car for
$18000. He is paying 5% interest for a 5
year term. How much will the interest
be for that loan?
Danielle gets a loan for a new car for
$18000. She is paying 6% interest
compounded semi-annually for 5 years.
Hoy much will the loan compounded
aDer 5 years?
12 x 15
Solve this. Explain your thinking.
Convince yourself.
Convince a peer.
Convince a skepJc.
If a Euro is 1.50 USD, how many USD is 5
Euros?
a) 30 quarters
b) 50 dimes
c) 70 nickels
d) 90 pennies
Source: Who want to be a millionaire?

7. • ‘…children ages 8 to 18 spend nearly 7.5 hours
each day consuming entertainment media –
listening to music, watching TV and movies,
surfing online, reading , etc…”
• Kaiser FoundaJon Study, 2010
• Reported in EducaJon Update, ASC, Sept 2014

8. 1. Learning Intentions
“Students can reach any target as long
as it holds sJll for them.” - SJggins -
2. Criteria
Work with learners to develop criteria so they know what quality looks
like.
3. Questions
Increase quality quesJons to
show evidence of learning
Whose quesJons? Who answers?

9. 4. DescripFve Feedback
Timely, relevant, personal, descripJve
feedback contributes most
powerfully to student learning!
5. Self & Peer Assessment
Involve learners more in self & peer assessment
6. Ownership
Have students understand their
learning and
Communicate It with others

10. Grade 9 Science – Starleigh Grass &
Mindy Casselman
Electricity
• The Challenge:
• Many of the students are disengaged and
dislike ‘book learning’. They acquire more
knowledge, concept and skill when they are
acJve, collaboraJve and reading in chunks.
• Starleigh and Mindy in It’s All about Thinking (Math and Science) 2011.

11. Essential Question
• If we understand how materials hold and
transfer electric charge, can we store and
move electric charge using common
materials?

12. • Individually, brainstorm what you can recall
about the characterisJcs of an atom.
• Meet in groups of 3 to add to and revise your
list.
• Compare this list to the master list.
• …(word derivaJons, label an atom…)
• Exit slip: 2 characterisJcs you want to
remember about atoms.

13. The Atom
• All ma@er is made of atoms.
• Atoms have electrons, neutrons, and protons. Electrons
move, protons and neutrons do not move.
• Atoms have negaJve and posiJve charges.
• Electrons have a negaJve charge; protons have a posiJve
charge.
• Protons and neutrons are located at the centre of the atom,
in the nucleus.
• Electrons orbit around the outside of the nucleus, in energy
“shells.”
• An object can be negaJvely or posiJvely charged,
depending on the raJo of protons and neutrons.

14. Inquiry Unit
• 300 000
• 1.2 million
• 85 million
• What is the connecJon among these numbers?

15. How are children still being exploited in
the 21st century and what can we do
about it?
• 300 000
– EsJmated number of child soldiers in the world today.
• 1.2 million
– According to UNICEL, the number of children trafficked or
sold each year
• 85 million
– EsJmated number of children involved in dangerous work
Children’s Rights, Issues 21, Scholastic, grades 6-9

16. • Choose your passage.
• Read it and highlight/note:
– New informaJon
– Surprising informaJon
– QuesJons
– Specialized language, technical vocabulary
• Find someone who has read your passage and compare
what you highlighted/noted.
• Meet with 2 others who have read different passages and
share your understandings.
• Quick write:
– What surprised you? What more do you want to know? How
has what you read/learned, connected to the quesJon?

17. Gallery Walk – writing lesson
• In groups, 3 things that count in wriJng
• Made class list and categorized
• Focus on meaning and thinking
– DescripJon
– ImaginaJon
– Detail
– Knowledge
– Focus
– Ideas
– Passion
– Intriguing
– Understandable

18. • Place a series of pictures around the room
• Students in groups of 3
• 3 minutes per picture
• Chat – How could you use this image in your
wriJng?
• Build on one another’s thinking
• View 3 pictures

23. • Eagle Dreams - WriLen by Sheryl McFarlane ;
IllustraFons by Ron Lightburn;
• ISBN: 1-55143-016-9

24. • Task: a piece of wriJng, choose your genre,
think about the criteria
• As you are moving to your desk, keep walking
unJl you have your first line in your head
• 12 minutes to write
• As students are wriJng, move about the room,
underlining something powerful (criteria
connected) in each person’s wriJng

25. • Each student shares what was underlined
• Listen to hear something you might want to
borrow
• As a class, decide on why each was underlined
• Create the criteria:
– Words that are WOW
– Details that showed emoJon or made a picture
– Hook – first line made me want to keep reading

26. Sample 1
One cool and breezy night, in a prairie, a boy sat
on the rim of his open window, looking out at
the moon, hoping for something to happen.
Aser a few minutes, he went back in and close
his window. Robin sighed. “I wished my life
has more excitement in it, “ he thought,
before he turned off his light and went to bed,
he took one quick look at his kite on top of his
bed that’s shaped like an eagle, and went to
sleep.

27. Sample 3
Once upon a Jme there was a boy that was facinated by eagles, he
asked his father to get one for him but he couldn’t. Then the boy
thought about a way to catch an eagle and then a different gender
one for more eagles. Delighted with his idea that he thought of last
night, he conJnued his plan. He put 3 fishes in the open with a
trap, and went to bed. Then he heard a noise that sounded like an
eagle. When he had checked the trap, he found an eagle that was
in his trap. Happily jumping around, the eagle made him inspired to
make a home for the eagle. He created a bond with the eagle. He
remembered how much his father despised eagles. He lead the
eagle to a secret place in the forest where his father never went.
He came downstairs and his father was in a rage. He threatened to
ground his son if he didn’t kill the eagles. Shocked, the boy asked
why he told him so. The father said they …

28. Sample 4
At Sunday, the Ximing and his father mother go
travel. On, Ximing say “I’m see a eagle!” His
father and his mother is going to his. And his
mother say “Oh, Help it!” OK. It was heal. OK.
We are go back home!
At home:
Today is very funning. Because we are helpa eagle!
I’m so happy now! Ximing is Jme to eat a dinner
say mother say …

29. • Kids can add/edit/conJnue to work
• Set up for next class
– Work on same criteria
– Hear again, pieces that work
– Move to where kids can idenJfy criteria in their own
work and ask for help with criteria that are struggling
with
• Aser repeated pracJce, students choose one
piece to work up, edit, revise, and hand in for
marking
• Feedback is conJnuous, personal, Jmely, focused

30. Level 1 Carpentry: Table saws and
band saws
• With thanks to Kevin Janz
• DemonstraJon and oral explanaJon
• Complete worksheet with the students
• SummaJve assessment: students demonstrate
their learning
• 1-2 hours
• 45 fill-in-the-blanks
• 4 – idenJfy parts
• 2 - tool operaJons

31. Technical, contextualized language
• mitre
• gauge
• enclosed base
• ouueed support
• configuraJon

32. • To cut rabbets using a dado blade, clamp…
• What do you know?
• What do you need to know?
• How can you figure it out?

37. De Walt table saw

38. Rockwell table saw

39. Dado blade

40. General Bandsaw