Introducing Ethics-Depth and Complexity

Ethics is my favorite concept from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity to use with young kiddos. In the beginning you will notice that when you ask them a question, they want to answer with what they think you want to hear. If I say do you like pasta? And half the class raises their hands, then I say well I LOVE pasta. What happens? Everyone's hands go up.

So I do a very conscious lesson with them to teach them that they are entitled to their opinion, whatever it is and they should believe in what they believe and be ready to back that up with an argument.

I ask them if taking something from someone else is ever the right thing to do? 

Response: No, never. Stealing is wrong.

Question: what if your house was on fire and your neighbor's hose was right there? Can you use it?

Response: Well, yes.

Question (the Les Miserables argument)-what if you were starving? Or if your child was starving?

Response: I don't know.

Question: What if no one would ever know it was you?

So we talk about how even though the icon for this concept is black and white-there are truly gray areas.

A couple of things to remember with ethics:

1) Their opinion is always correct. If they say the Boy in the Giving Tree was right to take everything from the tree and give nothing in return-as much as I disagree with that--it is their opinion.

2) Going along with that-I never tell them what my opinion is. Even if we have already finished the activity. I am a strict "no comment" because I know I have influence and I never want to change their own opinions.

3) The more you do these activities the better they get at it. I will never forget a discussion we were having-could a woman every be President? A boy said no because girls are not as strong as boys. Cecilia raised her hand and said "Miss Trayers, can I ask him something?-Chase, isn't your mom strong? Did you see Miss Trayers move that table the other day--she is strong". And I cannot tell you how proud I was that not only was she thinking and forming those opinions but voicing them as well.

4) I tell my parents at Open House-I apologize right now, but I am going to teach them how to make a better argument. :) They will argue their cases more.

Some books I love to use to introduce this concept:

Classic book. Was it right that David acted that way? Was it right how the teacher reacted? 

Is it right to call someone by the wrong name if you don't know how to pronounce it? 

What would be the the right way to ask someone about their names?

Is it right to call our class a "family"?

Is it right that we force kids to attend school? 

Was it right for school to get mad and spray the water fountain because its feelings were hurt?

Is it right to say you don't like school?

How I Introduce Depth and Complexity-Multiple Perspectives

I have always taught Kinder and 1st grade. These kiddos often have not ever been expected to think from the perspective of others. The world revolves around them. :) 

This is one of my favorite scenes from Dead Poet's Society:

Dead Poet's Society-Perspective

So to introduce this concept I would love to say I leap up on my table like this but let's be honest, it's more like an awkward crawl. ;) But I stand on the table and model for them looking around-what can I see now that I couldn't see before? The dust on the shelves. The bird's nest in the tree outside. Then for the most exciting part-I have them climb up in their own chairs and do the same thing. After all the gasps and murmurs-can we really do this? They discuss how their perspective changed.

Then we read this story. School is super excited for the 1st day until the students arrive and start complaining about school. Then we write about how our school felt on the first day.

Then we read this story about a principal so excited about school that he ends up changing the calendar so we go to school every day. We discuss a principal's job and they write from the perspective of a principal. They often just write about taking bad kids out of class, but I encourage them to dig a little deeper than that. How would it feel, what would a principal wish?

The more often you do these activities comparing perspectives, the more empathy you will see developing in your kiddos. They will randomly say "I feel sorry for homeless people-where do they go to the bathroom?" or "I feel sorry for the dinosaurs-it must have been so scary to see that asteroid and not know what was happening". But I believe that's a good things. Our world can defintely benefit from more empathy. 

Ideas for Vocabulary

As a teacher of young children, one of the most important things I think we can teach our kiddos is vocabulary. Multiple studies have shown that kids growing up in economically disadvanted areas simply do not have the same access to vocabulary growing up. We need to give our students academic vocabulary in a diverse myriad of experiences but also implicitly teach them new words. Speak to them as you would to adults, encourage them to ask when they don't know what a word means. 

So how do we do this?

Every read aloud, I pre-read and make notes of vocabulary my students may not know. I teach those words first before I read the story. Not many, just 2 or 3. Then I reinforce those meanings when I get to those words in the text. 

We have vocabulary journals where we fill in Frayer Models and answer questions about words. Is it a good thing to be "unique"? When was one time you felt "timid"? 

Vocabulary Runway shows-I assign students a word to dress up as-this is a great alternative to dressing up at Halloween. They do a little speech giving the meaning of their words and using it in a sentence.

Putting words in order of severity: irate, irritated, angry, livid-put them in order from least serious to most serious. You can do this for almost any feelings words. 

I discovered this site recently:

NY Times Connections  -you are finding the connections between sets of words. There are 2 that are fairly more obvious and then 2 that get more rigorous.

And lastly, my word walls are interactive. I put the words with a picture so they can find a word , take it down and use it in their writing.

Vocabulary is such an important skills-teaching it implicitly and by osmosis.

Contemporary Beginning of the Year Read Alouds

There is nothing wrong with the classics. There are books that I still use the first week of school, year after year. But I also want to make sure I am reading the newer books that are being published each year as well. Not only are publishers more cognizant of diversity in their characters, but it ensures my students are being given unique experiences. There's nothing like hearing "my teacher read us that book last year". 

So here are my recommendations:

Using Depth and Complexity with Chrysanthemum

I LOVE setting the stage for our daily read-alouds in the beginning of the year. There are so many amazing stories where students can compare their own experiences and hopefully to allay any anxieties about going back to school. I will never forget a Kinder student I once had. When they left after the first day I said "see you guys tomorrow!" and she groaned and burst into tears crying "what?! we have to come back tomorrow?". 

Kaplan's Depth and Complexity are concepts where we can dig more deeply into these stories and analyze these characters. I introduce them early on because we will use them daily throughout the year. Many of these activity ideas can be transferred to any back-to-school story.

  Big Idea-how do our names help shape our identity? What do you think 

                                          parents think about when they decide on a name? Would you name 

your child a unique name?

           Over time-What do you think Chrysanthemum would name her child when 

                                  she grows up-a unique name? How do you think Victoria will change

                                     over time-will she still be mean? 

\           Trends-I am fascinated by trends in names over time. How do

                                     cultural things like popular celebrities or tv shows influence names? 

                                    How do the common names change when you look at data from 

                                                                           other countries?

    Details- what would the story have been like if her name was Jane?

Creating Risk-Takers

I think I was in college when I had a very memorable conversation with my mother. I had been a tour guide and wanted to apply to be the Tour Guide Supervisor but was afraid I wouldn't get it. And she said "you have the biggest fear of failure I have ever seen in a person". My response, to her chagrin, was "who do you think made me that way?" :) Those words from her stung. I was too worried about what people would think to try things.

I also think a lot about an article I read that talked about how on playgrounds most parents encourage their boys to take risks and cajole their girls for doing the same. "Be careful", "that doesn't seem safe". I think about this as I plan lessons for my students. I want them to have the confidence to take risks. To fail and get back up but not being afraid to fail.

So how do we do this? I try to model it for my kids. I'm trying this new idea, we'll see if it works. Letting them know-I am presenting in a meeting today and I'm a little bit nervous but I'm going to do it anyway. This past year I had students be the teachers. For our warm-up in reading and math, they let the review. I saw a huge leap in confidence for the students who really embraced this.

Another way is to model it with stories. Here are my favorites:

Huge fan of Peter Reynolds, but this one is one of my favorites. Talks a lot about taking the risk of being yourself.

Fish wants Snail to come on adventures with it but Snail doesn't want to leave his place of comfort.

One of my favorite discoveries. Penguin has the soul of an eagle and wants to learn how to fly. It shows penguin trying, failing and not giving up. The last part is my favorite!

This book shows not only how to be brave and try but it also shows an amazing understanding dad who encourages without pushing.

Tree is supposed to lose his leaves but he doesn't want to take the risk to change. 

My favorite wordless book. Braving the ocean waves.

Beautiful story about kids using their imagination to fight boredom. Poetically written.

Ideas for End-of-Year Activities

I know this can be a stressful time between the kids excitement at school almost being over and all the lists of things that need to get done. But I enjoy being able to go off script a little bit. I do daily themes and allow students to apply skills they have learned throughout the year.

We did a Food Truck unit-we read several books about food trucks including 

We used language of the disciplines to talk about vocabulary a chef would use and then also talked about the job of marketing and how they would come up with a name for their truck and a concept. Then I broke the students into groups and they were to come up with what their food truck would be called, what it would look like and a menu. Then they presented their truck to the group.

Make a song/commercial for our school. Again they worked in groups to take a melody of their choice and change the lyrics to be about our school. They really got into this one clapping out the beats and looking for rhymes. After practicing they performed it for the class.

Art Theme-it is very important to me that we incorporate art into our daily plans. We learned about a lot of famous artists this year and the vocabulary that goes along with creating art. For this activity we thought like Mondrian and made a creation using his primary colors/shapes. Then we painted like Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel.  Now rest assured, I did go over with them that the fact he painted the chapel ceiling on his back is actually a myth-but it is really hard to paint a ceiling. So we taped paper up under the tables-each artist had an assistant and using watercolors they attempted to create a masterpiece of their own.

Escape Room-we do a lot of escape rooms throughout the year. This one I made clues to identify which classmate stole the cookie from the cookie jar. "This students has a few friends, actually he has many, he drives his teacher crazy, always talking about Kenny" (this student is obsessed with South Park. They also had word searches, puzzles to put together to see which classmate as well as code breaking and addition to solve for the letters. It was the most fun escape room we did all year!

I will miss this amazing group of boogerbears! :)