Greatness

"Children who are convinced of their greatness will manifest it as a reality."

"When you reflect greatness to a child, the child begins to act out greatness."

I believe that every child has the potential for greatness.  I believe that it is our responsibility to not only help them find that greatness within themselves but to also help them to believe in their own greatness. So, on top creating leaders, teaching reading, math, science, writing, social studies, manners, how to walk in the hall, how to be respectful and responsible, etc......we must also help every child realize his or her potential for greatness and how they can let that shine.  I know that we are faced with so much during any given school day.  I know that the demands of our jobs have become at times overwhelming.  Though our students may lack many needs from home, I believe that we can create an "inner wealth" that can help drive them to success, help drive them to overcome and break what may be a cycle in their life.  Howard Glasser defines this inner wealth as the ability to feel successful, cope, be happy, and grow within ourselves and with other people.  "Inner wealth is an inner experience of our greatness and deeply connected to our feeling that we have meaning, that we are important just by virtue of being alive." - Glasser

We have begun looking at the nurtured heart approach, and this is one way we can help our students realize their own greatness.  If we consider this just one more thing, we are missing the point.  Creating leaders and developing and realizing greatness addresses the whole child, and I do believe we have a responsibility today to teach the whole child.  I also believe that this mindset will lead to far better students in math, reading, writing, etc.  One nurtured heart principal noted that children who come to experience inner wealth do not need to be coerced into preparing for and doing well on tests; rather, they desire to do well.  They want to show up ready to participate.  They want to do their homework and schoolwork and perform well, no matter what their home situation might be.  Wouldn't it be nice if our phone calls home were to report progress and success instead of problems?

Greatness is something everyone possess.  Even on the days we make mistakes, we do a lot of things right.  With all the things we do right, we demonstrate greatness.  This is true of each of us as well as each of our students.  When things are going "right", we often say nothing, but as soon as a mistake is made or a bad choice, we give a great deal of energy to the negative.  Even with ourselves.  We forget to notice all that we do well....all that we do right, and then we beat ourselves up over a mistake or something that didn't go so well.  Knock it off!  YOU are GREAT, and you possess so many qualities of greatness.  We need to start noticing those qualities in ourselves, each other and in our students.

"Greatness is the energy that dances and shines within each of us."

This can be done by recognizing our students in vivid verbal detail whenever they are doing something right or not doing something wrong.  As our students begin to accept their own greatness, they can choose to live lives that cultivate and expand this greatness.  Think for a minute of a student with whom you have encountered a great deal of difficulty.  The student in the room who tends to act out or not follow directions.  Got him or her in your mind?  Now, think of five qualities of greatness this student possesses.  Yes, greatness qualities.  Now, how can we help each of these children see and believe in their own greatness?  Chances are these students often hear what they are doing wrong.  They get a great deal of energy when they are misbehaving.  Let's try to turn that energy upside down and give them energy when they are displaying their greatness.  When they are making good choices.  Label the qualities of greatness so that they begin to see and recognize it in themselves.  

We have so many kids who believe they are bad.  They hear this at home and from each other.  We have students who have seen nothing but poor choices.  They hear yelling and screaming all the time.  They are surrounded by negativity.  It will be difficult for them to shine and show their greatness if we don't help them see the qualities of greatness they each have.  Within each of them is an inner wealth and so many qualities of greatness, and they are in the right place with the right people to help them find it and believe in themselves.  

Can we start this week by identifying the great qualities in each person, in ourselves, in our students, in each other?  Can we put more energy into the positive this week?  Notice the greatness.  Refuse to energize negativity. Relentlessly energize success. 

"Seeing and reflecting greatness in a child in the moment brings the child to an understanding of his own worth, value, ability to be loved and ability to contribute."

 

"Seeing and reflecting greatness in a child in the moment brings the child to an understanding of his own worth, value, ability to be loved and ability to contribute."

Articles Worth Reading:

What's so Genius about Genius Hour - +Pernille Ripp @pernilleripp

Why I dislike Homework and how the research backs me up - shared by +Erin Klein @kleinerin

8 Things We Can't Accept In Education - +Justin Tarte @justintarte

7 reasons to incorporate movement, songs and stories into your teaching - shared by +Steve Reifman

6 Ways to help kids become quality readers - shared by +Steve Reifman @stevereifman

5 signs your students are growing more confident - shared by +Angela Maiers @angelamaiers



Videos Worth Watching:

Elements of Greatness

Kid makes dad proud with math score - Experiencing Success - I love this reaction!!!

John C Maxwell teaches about time management

This is a must watch - Ellen Degeneres Haunted House ......Be Brave!  Made me Laugh out Loud!

Reading Goal Part Two

My plan was to not send a blog link this week so that you would have time to continue viewing and reading last week's links on reading research.  We continue to work toward developing our school wide goal on reading.  I wanted to share an additional link this week on Accelerated Reader and whether or not it is a good tool for promoting lifelong readers.  I believe it has its place in motivating students to read, but please read the following link on additional strategies to use along with Accelerated Reader. Our ultimate goal is to motivate all students to read and to develop lifelong reader.  Every strategy we use must help us meet this goal.

I wanted to share with you a comment from a parent and a facebook comment from one of our parents. I was talking to one of our parents about hunting, and he stated that his son reads the entire time they are in the woods.  He said that he has to tell his son that if he sees a deer, he will have to put his book down so that turning the pages doesn't scare the deer away.  Another parent posted the following post and picture on facebook this weekend:

Perfect end to a long week listening to Avery read a Magic treehouse book with a flashlight by the fire...Life is good 

I would say that we are off to a great start with our reading goal, and I know we can continue to create more and more stories just like these as ALL of us read and read and read!

I loved this idea outside the door of EVERY staff member.  I believe it is important for a reading goal to truly be school wide, our students need to see that we are all readers.

Links worth reading:

Accelerated Reader and Lifelong Readers - Please read all the way through to the recommendations and suggestions.

Please take some time to read the links from last week if you have not had time read them.

READING - A Wildly Important Goal (WIG)

As we began our discussion on a school wide goal for this school year, there was no question that we wanted that goal to be reading.  That was the easy part.  We are a staff who feels passionately about reading.  We are readers ourselves, and we want to instill that passion for reading in our students.  We know that creating a culture of passionate readers is a "Wildly Important Goal."  Then came the difficult part.  What will we measure?  How do we measure success with this goal?  We know the research supports increasing time spent reading inside and outside of school.  How can we possibly measure this and have the data be valid?

The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive: Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have the opportunity to choose what they read. - Allington

One thing we know is that a school wide goal of reading will require buy in and support from parents. We need our parents to understand the importance of reading outside of school and to realize the value in time spent reading.  Regardless of the measure we choose to track, the success of this goal will require reading at home.  Do we measure reading progress through reading levels?  When I was asked what do you want?  What are you ultimately looking for?  Let me share a couple stories with you to answer that question.  When Janet Tashjian came to our school she said that when her publisher sent her on a school tour for her new book, she wanted to visit schools who loved books and loved reading. While at camp, I smiled when I saw a student with a book at the breakfast table.  I was almost plowed into in the hallway by a student who was reading a book on his way to class.   I had to order more books after Janet's visit because we sold out.  So, when I am asked what I want for Parma Elementary School, that is exactly what I want.  I want students who are so into their books that they can't put them down at breakfast at camp.  I want students who have their nose in a book and don't see people coming toward them in the hallway.  I want a school that authors want to visit because we are all so passionate about books and reading.  I want to not be able to keep books on the shelves in our classrooms.  That is what I want.   I'm not sure how we are ultimately going to measure that, but I want it, and I believe with all my heart we can have it.

It starts with us.  It starts at our school, in our classrooms.  Yes, we want to increase time spent reading at home and outside of school, but we don't have control of that.  We can control what our reading instruction looks like at school and how much time we allow students to read.  In The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller states, "No matter what intervention strategies you employ to support developing readers or what enrichment projects you provide to your most gifted ones, none of it is going to affect the reading achievement of all of the students in your classroom the way hours and hours of time spent reading will." There is so much research to support the correlation between time spent reading and reading achievement.  In Pathways to the Common Core, Calkins, Ehrenworth and Lehman state,  "If your goal is to accelerate readers' ability to comprehend increasingly complex texts, matching readers to books is necessary, but not sufficient.  The engine that motors readers' development is the time spent in engaged reading and in talking and writing about that reading."  They go on to say, "It will be important, therefore, for you to organize the school day so that students have long blocks of time for reading."  Research in their book on the Common Core also states, "Although one can rely on common sense when concluding that in order to progress up the levels of text complexity, students need to read a lot, this is actually the one conclusion that is most supported by research.  94% of the tests on reading comprehension that collect data on volume of reading show that kids who are given more time to read do better than kids who have little time to read. "   The NAEP Reading Report Card showed that at every level, reading more pages at home and at school was associated with higher reading scores.

A few of the links below share some of the other research.  Understanding what that needs to look like in our classrooms has been discussed in book after book.  The Cafe Book and Daily 5, and The Book Whisperer are books I strongly encourage you to read if you have not already done so.  If you do not have a copy and want one, see me.  Providing time to read and guiding students to "just right" books for them is a critical part of our reading instruction in order to see reading achievement for all students.

Reading achievement, the joy of reading, reading fluency, excitement about a book or an author.....of course we are passionate about this. Of course this is Wildly Important to us.  Of course this is our school wide goal.  I am confident we will see reading competency rise at Parma Elementary.  I can't wait for that first student to bump into me in the hallway because he/she has his/her nose in a book.

Links worth Reading:

The 6 Ts of Effective Elementary Literacy Instruction - Allington:  Notice that the first T is TIME
What At Risk Readers Need - An Ed Leadership Article by Allington suggesting EARLY intervention
If They Don't Read Much, How They Ever Gonna Get Good?
How to turn your classroom into a hotbed of enthusiastic readers
Daily 5 - Cafe Menu - Resource with several links for each strategy
Every Child, Every Day - ASCD article
Make Reading a Habit at Home - suggestions for increasing and enjoying reading at home for parents
10 Facts Parents should know about reading - Great information for parents about reading and the negative effect tv watching can have on student achievement.
Biblionasium
Silent Reading - Rick's Reading Workshop-A video modeling a reading workshop and conferencing
Reading at Home
Monarch book award nominees - 2014:  The book trailers are great to show students


Videos worth Watching:

Interview/Podcast on Independent Reading:

Paper is not dead - nothing to do with reading....well, I guess it does....sort of....just funny

Classroom Instruments - Blurred Lines....a little music just because!