WMEP/NUA Blog

Hello Teachers,

Birmingham, Ala. was wonderful and a wonderful location for the Teaching for Intelligence Conference.  I was able to hear Meir Ben-Hur speak and he is a student of Reuven Feuerstein and showed strategies for working with math. I learned that before students can be successful in math, they need to understand the connections and reltionships involved in solving a problem. He has some books out about this process for any math teacher who wants to see how Reuven’s work on mediation is used in math. I was able to listen to so many experts in the field and then blend it all together at the Civil Rights Institute. Absolutley wonderful. Next year it is scheduled for the end of March in Albany, NY. I hope to see you there!

I thoroughly enjoyed the May 9 and 10 celebrations in WMEP. My hat is off to all the staff members who worked so hard to demonstrate how NUA strategies have been utilized in the classroom.

I heard from Mary with Hopkins Challeng that she even uses them herself at night when she can’t sleep. She said she thinks of a word or topic and then starts doing an A-Z Taxonomy and she said she is soon relaxed and her mind is clear of worry that she falls asleep. See-strategies are not just for kids! Thanks Mary for sharing.

The Hopkins Challenge teachers showed how to make small books in the classroom. No pencils, glue, staples or sciessor sare involved. Then one teacher had students take words from the A-Z Taxonomy and write a story in this book. She said the novelty had every child engaged. Another teacher had students use these books for poetry books.

A teacher from Edina High School used NUA stratgies to teach ESL students about seasons and they brought in their own background knowledge and cultural references while building vocabulary and learning about American traditions. Students then wrote poems from this excercise and moved through the seasons to photsynthesis and other aspects of curriculum. What a great way to blend culture with language and cognition.

I heard a teacher from Eden Prairie talk about using Four Corners to divide students into groups. The students’ favorite corners were about reality shows. What a way to blend youth culture with the corners strategy. 

Augusta Mann showed a strategy called Animal Talk. This is a variation on Peer Support where younger students create bubbles for animals they draw. The speech bubbles can be about any topic the etacher chooses.

An art teacher from Forest Hills used the Bridge Map to teach students shading and tints (I hope i have the correct art terms). The students created a visual Bridge Map with paints so they could see a tint is to a shade. This was with (I think)third grade students.

I am in the airport so I am recallingf rom memory. I will add an updated version in a couple days with more ideas after I check my notes. I hope others will add the wonderful things they do to this commentary.

Enjoy,

Alexis Leitgeb

Hello WMEP Teachers,

I want to share some wonderful ideas that I heard at another District. We used List-Group-Label and A-Z Taxonomy as a Priming activity. The next day we followed with a Defining Format review to start the class and the characteristics came from what the students had remembered during yesterday’s lesson. The students read the text and added to their Defining Format characteritsics, then the A-Z Taxonomy as Processing activities. As a retaining for Mastery we used Peer Support and the students completed their Thought Bubbles before posting them around the room for the Gallery Walk. Students seemed very excited about the progression of events. The teacher has shared with me the increased knowledge retention for this chapter. We also used A-Z Taxonomy as Priming activity prior to watching a video on energy. After small segments of the video I stopped the video so students could add words to their A-Z Taxonomy and share with a partner. We completed the video in this manner and the teacher felt students remained focused about the movie content better than if they had just watched it all in one sitting without refocusing their brains. Any other thoughts on how to use these strategies?

Have a great day, Alexis Leitgeb     NUA

Hello and welcome to our new site! The idea came from a suggestion by one of my WMEP teachers so we thought we would try this and see if the idea is popular. The teachers felt that if they have to miss any large group or site visit session, they did not have a way to catch up. They were also interested in hearing about ideas from other site visit discussions. As a result, I will be posting agendas and major points from each site visit for your comments along with large group session information. I will add ideas I hear about from other schools and districts I visit and I welcome your additions or comments also. I hope you enjoy the site. I will be updating this about three times per week during the school year, more often if needed. I look forward to reading your comments.

Alexis Leitgeb

Consultant for NUA

March Site Visits

This has been an exciting month at WMEP. I just want to remind everyone of the Celebration dates again. This will take place at St. Mary’s University on May 9 for Cohort 3 and May 10 for Cohort 4. Please don’t forget the one artifact per teacher to post for a Gallery Walk or on a table. If you have further questions, please submit them here and I will get back to answering them.

Some of the ideas that came through at the site visits included teaching alliteration through Alliteration Names and Sentence Stretchers. Students can select a letter or a word they have on their A-Z Taxonomy and then use Sentence Stretchers to create an alliteration sentence. We had fun with this at one of the site visits. We also used Carousel Brainstorming at one visit for a priming activity and at another visit for a processing activity. At a third visit we combined the two and used Carousel Brainstorming before reading an article and then added even more text information after processing the text through Think-Pair-Share and W3. At one site visit, the Flow Map of activities was (Priming) the Circle Map, A-Z Taxonomy, and Defining Format before reading the text to develop vocabulary and ”hook” the reader; (Processing) the Flow Map of events, Think-Pair-Share after reading chunks, a Tree Map for categorizing the information, and returning to the A-Z Taxonomy and Defining Format to add text-specific information; (Retaining for Mastery) Metacognition and Peer Support. We finalized the A-Z Taxonomy and Defining Format in case more information or vocabulary was gained during these last two activities. I know  couple teachers have incorporated the entire process or priming activities, processing activities, and retaining for mastery activities but a couple of them are using this for their Celebration presentations so I do not want to give out their “secrets” yet. Anyone have any other ideas for this format for a lesson of activities?

Alexis Leitgeb

NUA