Professional Learning Summit Day 2

Wow! Today was a day full of wonderful ideas! As I mentioned before, our county wrapped all of our professional development into 3 days. Today we had an AMAZING speaker, Rick Morris. He has made me rethink the way I manage EVERYTHING in my classroom! The Theme for the day was Eight Great Ideas. Here is a summary of what we learned and what I am planning on doing with ALL of this information: 1. Sign Language in the classroom: One of the key topics today was that teachers are doing way to much talking in the classroom. Rick Morris showed us several ways for teachers to be able to HUSH and use a variety of methods to get the students talking. The sign language approach was more about less talking for everyone. For example, He showed us a method for having students use different signs to signal if they have a comment, question, or answer. By having the students sign why they are raising their hand, the teacher is able to see who they need to call on. If it is a student with a question, the teacher needs to answer them immediately. If it is a student with a comment, the teacher can signal for them to wait. You can download this posters for your classroom at his website: Sign Language Posters 2. Echoing in the Classroom Another great point that he made with regards to teachers talking to much in the classroom he referred to a method called "Echoing" which is when a teacher repeats what a student has just said. He made some very valid points for not echoing student responses which is why I will be trying very hard to bite my tongue and not echo student responses this year. Morris said that by echoing student responses we as teachers are validating their responses and not letting the students think. he suggests a simple "Thank you" after the student response regardless of whether the response was correct or incorrect. Let me give you an example- Teacher: "What is the capital of Tennessee?" Student 1: "Nashville" Teacher: "Thank you." Student 2: "Nashville" Teacher: "Thank you" Student 3: "Memphis" Teacher: "Thank you" Wait... The capital of Tennessee is Nashville, not Memphis, so why did the teacher not correct the student? By not validating any answer as right or wrong, the students begin to question their responses. Student 10 may be thinking, "wait, I thought the answer was Nashville, but he said Memphis. Could it be Memphis?" Then the student stops, looks up the answer sees that it really is Nashville, and then raises her hand to answer Nashville. Other Points for Not using Echoing in the classroom: -Echoing enables students -Students think they do not have to listen to their peers, they think that teachers will restate important information. -Quiet students do not have to learn to speak up. -Students say "Echo" when they need something repeated, then it is the responsibilty of the student who said something to repeat what they said. -By allowing multiple correct answers, more students are getting to voice their opinion. 3 and 4. Timers and Sound Makers Morris gave really good reasons for using music, timers, and sound makers in the classroom. We learned today that a child's attention span is their age plus or minus 1 or 2 minutes. He suggests setting timers in your classroom for that length of time to give students breaks and processing time. He used sounds to signal events. He had a sound for students to come and pick up hand outs, a sound for students to line up at the door, etc. He used music to signal transitional times and talk times. 5. Student Numbers Student Numbers are already something that I use in my classroom. It is a great time saving tool, plus you can write numbers on things and then be able to use them year after year! He did make some new suggestions though, like having a student job be to put homework and classwork in number order. Then that student can write a post it to you with numbers of work not turned in, then you know exactly who needs to go to study hall or finish something during recess. He also suggested using these check off sheets that you can get on his site to know who has turned in things like school forms, permission slips, etc. You can get all of the things I mentioned above, plus a TON more at his website: Rick Morris