Gratitude- Happy Thanksgiving

What are you thankful or grateful for?

This is the question people are reflecting on during the month of November. 

I once was told to spend each night before bed reflecting with gratitude with what I do have.  This is a practice I do every time I hear myself venting and frustrated and magically things turn positive in my life when you focus on gratitude.

I want you to know that I am thankful to work with such professionals as all of you. Your dedication to your students and doing whatever it takes to help them grow both social/emotionally and academically is inspiring.   You treat them with the love and care as if they are your own children.

Did you know gratitude is something students need to be taught.  Check out this article to tap in on how we can support the development of gratitude with your students. 
Tapping into the Power of Gratitude

Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have. 

I’ve seen better days, but I’ve also seen worse. 

I don’t have everything I want, but I do have all I need. I woke up with some aches and pains, but I woke up. 

My life may not be perfect, but I am blessed.

 If you want to find happiness, find gratitude. 

When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. When life is better, say thank you and grow. 

When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.

Gratitude is one of the sweet shortcuts to finding peace of mind and happiness inside. 

No matter what is going on outside of us, there’s always something we could be grateful for - 

See more at: http://www.lorensworld.com/life-work/be-thankful-6-quotes-to-express-gratitude/#sthash.UpviwDii.dpuf

Non-fiction reading and writing.

The ASCD published magazine Educational Leadership focused their November edition on "Tackling Informational Text". Editor in Chief, Marge Scherer describes the conversations that took place with the EL editors on their experiences with nonfiction text and how the authors discuss how the CCSS emphasize teaching students how to read informational text. 

Educators are reminded by Mary Ehrenworth (deputy director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, New York),  "You are educating them not for the state test, not for that college class, but for the contributions they'll make to the world.....You are setting out to transform their ideas about what it means to read."

Here is a great article about starting out with informational texts:

Ed Leadership: Starting Out Practices

Check out this website for free downloads of great primary level non-fiction texts.
http://textproject.org/students/beginningreads/

Differentation in the CCSS

The Common Core has been a guiding force in classroom shifts in the past few years in Hudson.The Common Core State Standards outline rigorous content expectations with the intent to make all students college- and career-ready by the end of 12th grade. 
Questions that come up are how do we use the standards to meet the individual needs of my students.  This includes specific learning disabilities, speech disorders, ELL, EBD, Gifted and talented students and the range of students you see in your classroom.

The graphic above shows the student is always the center of learning.  We need to utilize formative assessments to determine student needs to reach the outcome or the CCSS.  Differnitated instruction is the route we take to support students to independently demonstrating the standards.

Click here to view the standards.

Directly From the Common Core State Standards for English/Language Arts… 

"By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed... Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards." 

"The Standards set grade-specific standards but do not define the intervention methods or materials necessary to support students who are well below or well above grade-level expectations. No set of grade-specific standards can fully reflect the great variety in abilities, needs, learning rates, and achievement levels of students in any given classroom. However, the Standards do provide clear signposts along the way to the goal of college and career readiness for all students." 

"All students must have the opportunity to learn and meet the same high standards if they are to access the knowledge and skills necessary in their post–high school lives." 

"Instruction should be differentiated: good readers will need much less practice with these concepts than struggling readers will. The point is to teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know—to discern when particular children or activities warrant more or less attention." 

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Directly the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics…
“These Standards do not dictate curriculum or teaching methods. For example, just because topic A appears before topic B in the standards for a given grade, it does not necessarily mean that topic A must be taught before topic B. A teacher might prefer to teach topic B before topic A, or might choose to highlight connections by teaching topic A and topic B at the same time. Or, a teacher might prefer to teach a topic of his or her own choosing that leads, as a byproduct, to students reaching the standards for topics A and B.”

“What students can learn at any particular grade level depends upon what they have learned before. Ideally then, each standard in this document might have been phrased in the form, ‘Students who already know A should next come to learn B.’ …. Learning opportunities will continue to vary across schools and school systems, and educators should make every effort to meet the needs of individual students based on their current understanding.”

The keys to differentiation are to change:
1.  Content

• Use the standards from the grade below if students need more support or the higher grade levels to determine appropriate extensions 
• Different text levels or complexity in Guided Reading
• Choice interests for inquiry

2.  Process

• Gradual Release to scaffold learning- Think aloud, Think together, Guided Practice, Independent Practice
• Small group corrective teaching with more support
• Small group extension
• Use more visuals and vocabulary development

3. Product

• Use choices for students to share learning

Read more on differentiation:  Differentiation in the Common Core  Please comment to share more ideas how you differentiate in the CCSS.

Book Study

Here are the great books being read at Hudson Prairie during our book studies.

They will help us uncover our enduring understanding of:
Preparing learners for a changing world requires responsive shifts in teaching and learning.
and answer our essential questions of:
What do learners need to prepare for our changing world?
What shifts can we make in our practices to prepare our students for the changing world?




We want to collaborate with North Hudson about our reading on Twitter and share our learning with our colleagues here at Hudson Prairie.
Please get a Twitter account so you are ready to join in the learning.
How to set up a Twitter Account
Twitter for Beginners

#HudsonBookStudy is our hash tag!
Just put that in the message and we can search for all tweets that are related.

Let the learning begin!

Read chapter 1 by November 5th and be ready to tweet!