Stolen Focus
What was the result when the CEO of Perpetual Guardian ran an experiment with his company to switch to a 4-day work week with fewer hours for employees, but the same pay as they would earn in a 5-day work week?
Andrew (the CEO) found that productivity went up and employee satisfaction and energy had also improved. Distractors like web browsing off-task went down by 35%, and levels of engagement/teamwork with coworkers greatly improved. Problems that were disrupting efficiency, employees were then motivated to correct to get the work done.
What is the Dinner Party Strategy?
The Dinner Party Strategy is where students do research into figures or characters in a story (whichever is relevant to the topic covered) and create dinner-table questions to discuss with peers as the figures they impersonate. For instance, one student would research Queen Elizabeth and have a "dinner party" with their peers (who are other historical figures) and have discussions as their figures. This helps students understand others' thinking processes and relevant topics to discuss.
What was the difference in the percentage of students who scored above or at proficiency between English learners, all students, and former English learners?
All Students in R/LA - 50.5%
English Learners in R/LA - 23.8%
Former English Learners in R/LA - 52.6%
Students who were once ELs and received the academic support to be proficient in English tend to have the most success in these assessments.
What must we focus on as educators to ensure students are college, career, and workforce ready?
We need to focus on robust, rich, and complex vocabulary knowledge that is related to the academic content so that they learn about the discipline and collaborate effectively.
What is Restorative Discipline?
An approach to discipline that builds upon the foundational idea that schools are places where students are expected to make errors and learn from them (p. 133). This approach allows growth from conflicts rather than focusing on "corrections."
What is the importance of space for mind wandering?
List some Strategies for the Lesson Preparation aspect of a lesson?
It's important to have cue tips for students so they know what to expect for today's lesson. This includes Comprehensible Input and coverage of clear content and language objectives as well as supplementary materials.
How can we make Content-based Instruction Comprehensible?
Teachers should provide rigorous, grade-level instruction to keep students engaged and challenged with the n+1 method. With that in mind, they must make their lessons fit for multilevel classrooms to meet all students where they are at.
Teachers should also identify ways to incorporate tech and remote learning.
Co-teaching, Collaborative Academic Conversations, State Standards, and multi-tiered System of Support.
How do we determine which words to prioritize to teach to a classroom?
It is best to categorize words into tiers 1-3. Tier 1 includes general vocabulary that can be learned through spoken language. While familiar to most students, they might need some attention for EL students. Tier 2 consists of unfamiliar vocabulary that is unlikely to be learned independently. "The CCSS refers to these as 'general academic words.'"
Tier 3 words are highly specific, content/discipline-based vocabulary and are best taught within the content area. Note that though they may be able to define these tier 3 terms, it doesn't mean they'll be able to demonstrate the concept.
What are the five goals of Restorative Discipline?
1. Build Positive Relationships
2. Reduce and Prevent Harmful Behavior
3. Resolve Conflict and Hold People Accountable
4. Repair Harm
5. Address and Discuss the Needs of the School Community
What is harmful in the Cruel Optimism" that Hari talks about in Chapter 8?
Cruel Optimism is the belief that we can independently regain our focus and drive through self-discipline and point the blame for our loss of attention span internally. The harm in this is that the capitalist industry has shifted to steal our attention away from us, from diet, to social media and surveillance. Though independent steps can greatly help, it is often a losing battle (which is why people tend to fail in a short period) and excuses the blame from Silicon Valley and tech companies that know what they're doing to our attention and health.
How can one implement the Surprise Book activity in their classroom?
The Surprise Book activity is basically a "blind date" with a book for the class. The teacher should select a book that represents a current unit or theme with good visuals on the cover page. They should then wrap the book up and ask the class to pass it around, taking turns slowly ripping the wrapping paper and making predictions about what they're going to read or the themes included. By the end, students will have discussed multiple themes and figured out the correct one before even opening the book!
What is the SIOP model?
Sheltered instruction and content-based language instruction. This model is a research proven method that supports multilevel acquisition classrooms, and when used effectively, create supportive classroom environments and flexibility within lessons.
What is the importance of providing students with opportunities to play with and manipulate word meanings?
This "play" with vocabulary enables students to develop metacognitive and "flexible understanding of words in every content and classroom." Students best learn vocabulary and strategies through repeated practice and exposure. Some ways to encourage this play are by asking students how they are learning new terms, and asking them to explain different definitions for the same term.
Highlight some differences in approaches between punitive and restorative approaches.
Restorative Approach - People and relationships are violated, Justice identifies needs and obligations, Students are held accountable for the harm they've caused and work towards a positive outcome, and all parties, including staff, are involved in the justice process.
What is "Surveillance Capitalism?" How is it harmful?
Why are these SIOP strategies effective in the classroom?
These SIOP strategies emphasize the creative aspects to learning for students and make the content engaging. An ideal lesson engages students for +90% of the period, and to do this without draining the students--while keeping the content rigorous to still challenge students---the activities feel refreshing and enjoyable. Furthermore, these activities allow for multi-tiered instruction.
Does the SIOP model and responsibility of language acquisition lie solely on English educators?
No, content-based language education is necessary in all classrooms so that students learn to understand the relevant academic language needed for math, science, social studies, and beyond the 4 core subjects.
Explicit vocabulary instruction "should focus on strategies that promote independent word knowledge" (p. 167). This instruction is focused on ensuring the students understand the terms that are generally found in conversation or are more common than discipline-specific.
Discipline-specific instruction focuses on the concepts and terms within the content area itself. This instruction helps students develop their understanding of the terms and language of the content, and enables them to demonstrate mastery.
How can we use Affective Language, Statements, and Questions to create a restorative discipline environment?
Affective Language genuinely expresses emotions related to specific behaviors. The use of affective language can help students--at all grade levels--avoid future conflict and allow students to deal with current difficult situations.
Affective Statements are the first type of affective language. These statements help students understand how their actions have impacted their community/peers. Students and teachers are encouraged to communicate with affective statements as an informal practice, as it is a cultural shift and doesn't take much planning.
Affective Questions allow for discursive exchange that leads to deeper understandings. These questions can redirect a student's behavior, but can also help facilitate problem-solving between students.
What is the likely contribution genetics have in ADHD?
Genes were previously thought to have over 80% of the contribution to why someone might have ADHD, but now it is known that factors like stress and external environment are much more impactful. The truth of the number is about 15-30% in regards to the correlation between genetics and ADHD.
How does the text offer advice in writing your first SIOP plan?
The most important idea to keep in mind is that a SIOP lesson is an integrated lesson that includes scaffolding, comprehensible input, and activities that blend together to feel like one cohesive session rather than 30 separate mini-sessions. SIOP lessons are appropriate for ALL grade levels. Take your time integrating SIOP lessons, set goals to do 1 a month or 1 a trimester. Use a previous lesson you feel comfortable with, identify already present SIOP components then adjust the lesson accordingly.
Why is it important we make content comprehensible for multilingual/English Learners?
We mustn't think of students who are learning English as a weakness because their strength is language; they are often multilingual students or have another language they speak fluently while learning English. As educators, we cannot assume we won't have EL students in our class, and the population of EL students is rising in classrooms, and we are responsible for their educational success.
How can we foster students' independence beyond teaching them vocabulary strictly through instruction.
Our instruction should enable students to play with the vocab they've acquired. We need to teach students the tools for deciphering unknown words as they are reading. These strategies include: Context clues, Knowledge Rating, Etymology, and Morphemic instruction.
What are the steps to use Affective Statements and Affective Questions?
Affective Statements Steps:
1. Self-identify how you are feeling or how you were affected by the behavior
2. Self-identify the specific action or behavior you are responding to.
3. Bring these steps together in an authentic expression of how you are feeling and affected by the specific behaviors being redirected or reinforced. (p. 139).