July 21, 2022 · curriculum
Students use maps to do research. I know it is the middle of summer, but I finally had time to reflect on and write about one of my favorite units in both reading and writing: nonfiction! I’ve tried out many different kinds of nonfiction units over the years and while I still love our Biographical Essays: Researching People Who Inspire Us unit, I have enjoyed the students’ enthusiasm and engagement in all of them. Nonfiction literacy is so important. It ties into media literacy and understanding and learning about the world around you, is a life skill (you will always need to understand and explain information!). There are so many facets to it between learning about facts vs opinion, critical literacy, synthesizing information, and more. But most of all, it is fascinating and FUN. Some essential elements: you MUST have great mentor texts (we had a lot of success with Pink is for
nonfictioncurriculumreadingwritingunits
February 21, 2019 · curriculum
Happy snow day all! Not teaching today means I have time to reflect on and write about some activities we tried out this month related to the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action (which we also participated in last year ), and Black History Month. While it happens that our biographical essays unit (which ties in with our non-fiction reading unit) falls during this month, we of course try to teach with an anti-bias framework every day (and all day!). Our curriculum, language, literature, and so much more should reflect the diversity of our world (as we the teachers do!) and we work hard to make this a reality everyday. So we are very purposeful about what we teach during Black History Month/Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action in hopes of avoiding the pitfall of teaching Black history only one month out of the year. This month, we used a number of wonderful read alouds to
Black History MonthBlack Lives Mattercurriculumread aloudNews
August 29, 2018 · curriculum
Setting up our classroom for the new school year! I know many teachers have already had their first day (or week) of school and I’m sure you had lots of wonderful activities, read alouds, get to know yous, and interactions planned. I am planning for my first day of school next week and reflecting on some of the activities I’ve used in the past that I know I want to use again. Here are some of my favorites: Name related activities : Name activities are the best. They provide an opportunity for you to learn about your students and ask them how they would like to be addressed in class. They also create a chance for you to share something about yourself while learning about students’ identities. Here are some of my favorites: Create your Name : this activity was inspired by SEED. Have your students create their name in a way that feels good to them, using whatever materials you have on
back to schoolsocial emotional learningcurriculumMath
July 17, 2018 · conferences
Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the National Presbyterian School Diversity Institute featuring Rosetta Lee . I first encountered Rosetta when we were both presenting (about microaggressions) at the Asian Educators Alliance in 2016 , and have been a big fan ever since! I also loved attending a local conference and meeting many early childhood educators who also work in the DC Metro area. There were so many things to love about this institute. I especially appreciated being able to attend a session for early childhood (PK-3rd) educators, as so many diversity or social justice workshops seem to be geared for middle school and up. There is nothing like being surrounded by early childhood social justice educators to make you feel vindicated for all the times you insisted that third graders (or even fifth graders) are most definitely NOT “too young for this work!” I also was so
curriculumprofessional developmentanti-biasconferences
June 6, 2018 · curriculum
Student book review for Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper after our book clubs wrapped up. It’s so close to the end of the year (and summer!) that we have started getting questions about summer work and summer reading. We absolutely want to encourage students to read over the summer in order to maintain their good reading habits (which are important life skills) and avoid the dreaded summer slide . In our class (and at our school), we’ve found our students tend to have consistent access to books and reading options all summer, so for the population we work with, the most important way to encourage summer reading is to promote reading all year long! All year, we have read alouds in our 3rd grade class . While we know this takes up a lot of instructional time, we have found that reading chapter books out loud to our 3rd graders has improved their comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, and
book reviewbookssummer readingcurriculumread aloud
January 4, 2018 · simulations
In conjunction with the National Council for Social Studies Annual Conference, Nina's piece on teaching perspective and Economics through simulations was published here . Please read and let us know what you
simulationscurriculumEconomics
November 14, 2017 · simulations
In the process of teaching (and learning) geography in our third grade classroom, we found that our students were very North America and Europe centric. While eight year olds are naturally egocentric, we wanted an activity to shift their perspectives and push them to realize that there are “real, important people” ALL OVER the world. So we redesigned our beloved activity where we draw people to realize our internalized biases (that we wrote for 5th graders, but have used with adults as well) to make it more geography focused and 3rd grade appropriate. While we were focused on introducing inspiring (and unexpected) people from different continents, we also thought we might uncover some gender and racial biases along the way. We have been learning about world geography starting with the seven continents and five oceans since the first week of school. We started with the continents and
simulationgeographySocial Studiessocial justice educationcurriculum
November 6, 2017 · book review
A photo from our end of our read aloud celebration. Our first chapter book read aloud this year was Save Me a Seat by Gita Varadarajan and Sarah Weeks. It’s an amazing book for so many reasons, and was the perfect first read aloud for our class. While we felt it allowed for natural segues into many of the beginning of the school year discussions and activities, it’s a perfect book for anytime of the year. There are two narrators which leads to two vastly different perspectives (often on the same event). Our students reflected often on how two people can experience the same events very differently. This helped them brainstorm ways to be understanding and empathic. One of our students referenced part of the book as an explanation of how misunderstandings happen and why assumptions are dangerous. One of the main characters, Ravi, is a new student (and recent immigrant). His experiences
read aloudbook reviewbookscurriculum
August 19, 2017 · curriculum
My first day of school (with students present) is in a little over a week. My co-teacher and I are moving from 5th grade to 3rd grade, and although our students will be younger and more concrete, we will continue to talk about current events. We don’t have a choice. This work is too important to stop because it is scary, uncomfortable, or difficult. You know your students and what will work best for them, but here are some ideas of how to adapt and use the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)’s 10 Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide in your classroom. The 10 steps below are from their guide’s new edition. A few reminders: if you are afraid that something is “too scary,” stop and think about students (and their families) who are already scared before they come to school. If you are afraid to be “too political,” remember that teaching is a political act. Everything you say - or
current eventscurriculum
January 23, 2017 · curriculum
Hi everyone, Gabby here. I'm excited to share this idea with you today. It is one of my favorite ideas and tool we have used so far this year. You may have also noticed (we are 110% sure you have) that writing is a process and writing can be hard! We all have our moments where we slump into the doldrums and lows where we just do not know how to get out. I noticed this with myself when working on storytelling pieces.. Each time I started to take on a story, I found myself landing in the same slumps and moaning at very similar times in the process. My friends would laugh on the phone, "Gabby, this always happens to you.. Right about now!" What helped me was recognizing that the lows came specifically during the brainstorming process (and deciding which idea to use!) and just that knowledge that this was a part of my process, gave me some perspective to work through it. And thus, the
writingcurriculumprocessmapreluctant writers
January 18, 2017 · curriculum
"I learned that the small population of the upper class have more money than the huge population of the middle class. I do not think it is fair because a small amount people get a huge advantage over the massive amount of people in the middle/lower class." That's right, today in class we talked about the very agreeable subject of…. Money! We started our Economics unit yesterday with a simulation. In our activity we had the students do IR (independent reading) in spaces that simulated how wealth is distributed in the US. For example: 1 student has 11 chairs (wealthiest 1% has 42% of US wealth) 3 students have 9 chairs (next 9% has 36% of US wealth) 22 students have 6 chairs (bottom 90% has 22% of US wealth) This part of the simulation was all fun and games for us. We squealed and giggled and playfully whined about our legs being squished trying to cram onto those 6 chairs. But then… We
curriculumEconomicssimulationsactive learning
November 6, 2016 · conferences
Getting ready to lead our workshop! On Friday, we were fortunate to be part of the contingent from our school attending the Capitol Area Progressive Schools (CAPS) conference! The conference was held at another area progressive school and teachers and staff from seven other progressive schools were in attendance. We were excited by the prospect of sharing our simulations and curriculum with local schools as the possibility of continued collaboration is so much higher when you are in the same city! Our workshop centered around the social justice work in our classroom, with participants actually experiencing two activities we created ourselves: our drawing activity that highlights internalized stereotypes and our pom pom simulation . As always, our participants brought their own unique perspectives, responses, and reactions to our activities. During the drawing simulation, multiple people
conferencescurriculum
November 1, 2016 · conferences
We went to beautiful Portland, Oregon to present at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference (NWTSJ) . This conference is unique in that it is organized BY teachers and mainly run by volunteers. It was our first time in Portland and at this conference, and we were loved both (the sun even came out specially for our visit)! The keynote speaker, Kevin Kumashiro, Dean of the University of San Francisco School of Education, reminded us that education is a social movement and the purpose of a social movement is to change the status quo and the dominant or “common sense” way of thinking. His rhetoric around “common sense” resonated with us as we often tell our students that saying something is obvious or common is NOT an argument. Historically, it was “obvious” (to those in power) for a long time that white men were superior. It also speaks to the relevance of identity and
conferencesprofessional developmentcurriculum
October 5, 2016 · Uncategorized
We found an awesome "Women's Rights Advocate Monster" on someone's homework today! Cool! Is it only Wednesday? There's so much happening this week! The world keeps spinning! In our classroom especially there is a buzz about the upcoming election (especially the debates) and protests on protests on protests. One realm of protests our students have some background on in different capacities are the Black Lives Matter protests, largely the sports related ones. Another area of protest news that we have had energy around is water protectors against the DAPL (largely from us, because that protest has had a severe LACK of coverage). All of this is to say, while we have been working hard in 5th grade to tackle routines and settle in for the school year-- the world continues on! Finding the time and space to be informed about these news stories and issues can seem daunting and frustrating. Meet…
Social Studiessocial justice educationcurriculumcurrent events
May 8, 2016 · Uncategorized
Background: Following the Responsive Classroom model, the norms and expectations in our classroom are called our 'covenant'. In our classroom, we spend the first month and a half (!) trying to sort out what we value individually and as a class, so that we can create a covenant that feels true to us. We have three dynamic simulations in which students 'experience' Anarchy, Totalitarianism, and Republicanism. After each class period, we reflect on each government model to decide what we like best about it. We take these positive aspects and try to figure out how we want our classroom to run and which pieces we would like to incorporate into our community. The covenant is a labor of love and becomes all their own. This year, our class created a written covenant, a song (they are an incredibly musical bunch), and a logo which was "reproduced" (AKA copied and laminated) for everyone to put
simulationsexperiential learningIndigenous American StudiesSocial Studiescurriculum