Should we use Class Dojo, color charts, or other behavior modification systems in PreK-12 education?

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

There's a big divide these days in how educators feel about behavior modification systems, like Class Dojo or color charts. I've seen schools where everyone is expected to use the same behavior modification system, and other schools that have outright banned them. What's going on here?

It all has to do with extrinsic versus intrinsic rewards, and whether you throw in your lot with the behaviorists or the social constructivists.

Let's talk a look at these two somewhat competing theories.

You've heard of behaviorism even if you didn't take Psych 101 in undergrad. Remember Pavlov's dogs? He would ring a bell right before feeding them and they would start to associate the bell with food and would immediately salivate whenever they heard the bell, even if there was no food present.  That's classical conditioning. B.F. Skinner took it a bit further and found that he could change not only the physical response, but the behavior of subjects by giving them an external (extrinsic) reward. For instance, you can teach a mouse to push a lever whenever he sees a light come on, assuming that whenever he pushes the lever, a food pellet appears through a tube.

This conditioning, also called operant conditioning, can also be used to stop subjects from doing a behavior. For instance, if every time a mouse goes down a certain corridor in a maze, he gets an electric shock*, he learns to stop going down that corridor pretty quickly. This is still a version of extrinsic motivation, because the punishment is coming from a force outside of the mouse over which the mouse has no control.

These types of extrinsic rewards/punishments are typically what we see with behavior modification systems. With Class Dojo, teachers can extrinsically award or take away points from students based upon their behavior. Same with the color chart: when a student commits an infraction or does something especially wonderful, the teacher allows the student to change his or her color.

Let's leave aside the question of whether or not you agree with extrinsic motivators for a moment and discuss: do they work? The answer is: yes. Mostly. Sometimes. Okay, it depends.

Extrinsic motivations can fail in several ways. If the student doesn't care about the reward or the punishment, their behavior is likely to be unchanged. For instance, if the school is offering a chance to win a new bike for all students who have perfect attendance, but I just got a new bike that's better than the one being offered, the incentive for me to attend is lost. Or, if I miss a day because I have a violent stomach flu and I'm knocked out of the running for the raffle, what do I care if I miss another day after that?

Similarly, if the punishments don't bother a student, they won't care about them. A student who wants to stay home from school isn't punished when he or she is suspended. I taught several students who actually preferred silent lunch so they had some time to themselves; that punishment didn't influence their behavior at all. If a student is "on red" day after day, at some point that student will simply give up and figure why not act however he or she wants, because being "on green" is all but impossible?

So what the heck do we do for those students who don't care about our rewards or punishments?

Enter the family of constructivist theories. Constructivist theory builds on behaviorism by saying that hey--people aren't actually dogs and mice. The way that people make sense of their world (or, construct their worldview) matters when it comes to motivating them. Vygotsky also posited that it's not just about the individual's construction of his or her own learning, but there's a social element to it as well. For instance, in a classroom where the majority of students rarely follow the rules, a student who generally does follow the rules might also be persuaded to break them.

Constructivists are more likely to tell you that intrinsic motivators are where it's at when it comes to teaching students to behave. For instance, rather than punishing a student for stealing a cookie, have a class discussion about how it feels to be in a classroom where we can't trust each other, and how much better it would feel to live in a classroom where we do trust one another. In a classroom motivated purely by intrinsic rewards, we do our homework because we want to be the type of person who can be depended on and we feel good when we meet our obligations. We are rewarded or punished by our own feelings (and, if you're a social constructivist, the feelings of those around you).

What are the downsides to a classroom run purely on intrinsic motivators? Well, it can take a long time to build intrinsic motivation, especially if the student doesn't see the point. For instance, if a teacher assigns 30 math problems a night, the student who understand the process after problem #3 might decide that the assignment is ridiculous and playing video games is more personally fulfilling than checking off the homework box.

So, what's an educator to do? Well, here are some suggestions:

1. Use a mix of behavior modification systems WHILE working to build intrinsic motivation in students.

This was always my goal when teaching. The extrinsic motivators worked really well in the beginning of the year. Class dojo, color charts, etc., made otherwise abstract expectations more concrete for students. They had a visual against which to measure their own behavior. BUT, we had a lot of discussions about why we behaved the way that we did, and how much better we all felt when we got along.


2. When you DO use behavior modification system that involves punishment, apply punishments as consistently as possible, but apply rewards on a variable basis.

One thing we've learned from B.F. Skinner and his work on operant conditioning is that you are more likely to encourage a bad behavior if you only punish it some of the time. Students will constantly be testing to see if this is the time that they can get away with it. On the other hand, variable rewards tend to increase the likelihood of a wanted behavior. This is why people love slot machines; if people don't know when they're going to get the reward, they're more likely to try for it (as long as they receive the reward often enough to make it worth the trouble).

3.  Understand that different motivators work for different students.

Acknowledge ahead of time that some kids just won't care about Class Dojo and some of them might never agree that they should do homework just to feel better about themselves. You'll probably find a system that works for the majority of your students, but be open to changing it up for those who need something else.

4. Purposefully choose when you'll use intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards.

Some research has shown that when we reward students for things already liked anyway (for instance, drawing a picture), they're less likely to want to do it next time unless you give them another reward. Save your extrinsic motivators for things that your students might not otherwise want to do. There are some tasks that we simply have to slog through. For instance, I needed my students to memorize their times tables. Yes, we talked about why so they could understand, and I tried to make it as fun as possible with things like games, but I also extrinsically incentivized the heck out of those multiplication tables.

5. Strategically choose your rewards and punishments.

The instant you make something a reward, the more attractive you make it. The instant you make something a punishment, the more likely students will develop a negative association with it.

For instance, I never used myself as a punishment. Students who misbehaved didn't have to eat with me at lunchtime; they didn't get to eat with me at lunchtime. Why would eating with someone who cares about you be a punishment? Moreover, eating lunch with me was always a reward in my classroom.

Consider what happens if you give extra homework as a punishment. That effectively says that homework is a form of punishment...what student will want to do homework now?




*No actual mice were harmed in the writing of this article.

PBL Starter Guide: Help! My Students Procrastinate Too Much!

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

Do you know when I'm writing this blog? You guessed it, the day before we're about to do a PBL training. But that's okay! Did you know that there are actually two types of procrastination? There's constructive procrastination and unproductive procrastination.

Here's how it works. Let's imagine that you give an assignment for a big paper. Both Student A and Student B put it off until the night before.

Student A, however, has been thinking about it the whole time. She also knows that she's a fast writer and she's been paying attention in class and doing all homework assignments up until now. She sits down at 8pm and types out her thoughts and finishes her paper by 2am. She doesn't get a lot of sleep, but her paper is coherent and she earns an A.

Now picture Student B. Student B hasn't been doing the homework and often falls asleep in class. He's not a fast writer. He sits down at 8pm the night before to write his paper and by 10pm, when he has still only written one paragraph, gives up. He doesn't turn in anything.

See the difference? While Student A didn't get anything down on paper, she had of course been somewhat working all along. She's also more aware of her own strengths and knew that as a fast writer, she could put it off. Student B, on the other hand, did not complete any of the thinking required beforehand, and also misjudged his own abilities to complete a paper in a short amount of time.

Of course, Student A is going to think that she's fine procrastinating until she's asked to write a 20-page paper and realizes that she cannot physically do so in one evening. Therefore, it serves everyone to not only teach students the content, but how to manage their own time in a PBL. Here are some easy things you can do:

1. Chunk the PBL and set multiple due dates.

Don't require that an entire project be turned in last minute. If students have to research, make that due one week. Make their outline of their presentation due the next week. Make their rough draft of the presentation due week after, etc.. If you REALLY want to help your students achieve more, you can grade each portion, return it, and have them make changes before moving on.

2. Use checklists for each chunk and check in frequently with students.

Aim to check in with each group at least twice for each chunk. Ask them how it's coming. See if they need any support. If they're rocking and rolling, let them keep on. But this will prevent students from going too far down an incorrect path (or no path at all), only to freak out at the end when they realize they have to (
re)do everything.

3. Teach students how to set calendar reminders.

Use Google Calendar or Google Keep and use G-Suite training to help students better understand how to set up their own calendar invites. Have them set notifications for due dates that go off 1 week, 3 days, and 1 day before something is actually do. BONUS: If your students use Google Calendar, they can automatically create a Google Hangout to discuss their projects outside of school time.

Why Educators Need to Know about Chaos Theory

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

My first year of teaching, I taught a student named Marvin (not his real name). He was young for a third grader, but a bouncy, sweet young man who read on a pre-primer level. Throughout the course of the year, he made great progress. Our school qualified for free tutors, and his tutor came every week and developed a wonderful relationship with Marvin and his family. His mother and father were incredibly supportive and read with Marvin every night, and we saw Marvin move up two grade levels in reading over the course of the year.

Of course, he was still very young and behind, so we (his family, myself, and the school) made the decision to retain Marvin. Surely one more year would catch him up fully and he would enter fourth grade ready to conquer the world.

That was the plan. Then, Marvin's dad went to jail. His mom had a baby and had to go back to work, meaning she wasn't home most nights to read with him and he went to a babysitter who watched several other children. His tutor moved on to other work and was never replaced. Marvin's progress stalled. Then, on the day of the reading standardized assessment, our school security officer yelled at Marvin to pull up his pants right before Marvin came into my classroom, so Marvin came in, put his head on his desk, and despite all my efforts to coax him into a better mood, simply filled in random bubbles on his answer sheet.

Meanwhile, I came across the research on retention and the potential impacts it has on student dropout levels. I still feel the guilt of that decision to this day. I know that I thought I was making the best decision at the time, and all signs pointed to it being a good decision.

I'd forgotten about Chaos Theory, though.

You've probably heard of Chaos Theory. It's often known as the "Butterfly Effect," where a butterfly in some part of the world flaps its wings and causes a ripple of changes that affect the weather halfway across the world. The mathematics behind this theory originated with Henri Poincaré in the 1800s, when he noted that small initial measurements that may not even be registered by astronomers can lead to enormous impacts that are then observable. These observable impacts happen seemingly at random, but they aren't random; we just can't always perceive their causes. He therefore argued that this made strong predictions nearly impossible.

In the 1900s, Edward Lorenz entered the field and coined the term "Chaos Theory" to explain why a butterfly in Brazil can potentially cause a tornado in Texas.


The business world studies Chaos Theory in order to understand that long-term predictions are difficult, and one of the only things we can predict with certainty is an unknown amount of unpredictability. This translates to a need to develop long-range goals yet create avenues for flexibility within the action steps to meet those plans.

What does this have to do with education?

A lot, when you think about it.

Despite the slow swing of the pendulum away from high-stakes test scores, we're still living that world where a handful of standardized test scores can make or break an entire school. Therefore, schools make very calculated predictions about who will definitely or can maybe pass and implement very strategic instructional interventions for that latter group.

Here's the thing, though: students are not test scores. While we might wish that if we simply apply intervention A, we will get outcome B, people are actually a bundle of often unpredictable variables. We cannot only look at students from an instructional perspective; for instance, what Marvin needed most that second year with me wasn't more instruction. He needed stability. He needed trusted adults to help him work through his feelings. He needed someone to realize that on standardized assessment day, maybe his pants could sag just a little or could be addressed without yelling.

That's what Chaos Theory tells us: academic excellence doesn't come simply from quality instruction. There are simply too many variables, many of which we cannot measure and may never even realize exist, that have nothing to do with instruction. We have to welcome, teach, and support the whole child. We have to build schools that are flexible to meet students' changing needs, sometimes from one day to the next. We have to have a common vision and language of excellence, but teachers also need to have the discretion and training to meet students' needs, whether academic or otherwise.

In short, it's not enough to even expect the unexpected in education: we have to embrace it.













Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Director of Innovation and Professional Learning at Hampton City Schools. She can be reached at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.

Growth Mindset: Do Our Actions Match Our Words?

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

The term "growth mindset" is a well-worn phrase in education. Yet, sometimes we see schools where the staff talks a good talk about growth mindset, but certain actions or beliefs undercut the philosophy. It turns out, this can actually negatively impact the growth mindset of students.

Why does this happen? Let's take a quick dive back into our Psych 101 courses. You might remember learning about something called "Self-efficacy theory." Albert Bandura (1977) coined the term to describe whether an individual believes that they are capable of completing a specific task. People with higher beliefs in self-efficacy tend to be more successful in school and careers.

It makes sense, doesn't it? If you believe you can accomplish something, you'll often work harder and seek out more resources until you finally accomplish it. If you don't have faith in your ability to get the job done, you're more likely to give up more quickly. In other words, self-efficacy is often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And it's pretty obvious how this relates to a growth mindset. Young people who have a strong sense of self-efficacy often also have a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. They believe that they can grow and accomplish goals and are therefore more likely to persevere through obstacles. They see challenges not as barriers but as opportunities to grow and learn.

What does this mean for us as teachers? Well, lots of schools have recognized the importance of a growth mindset and have a lot of important discussions with their students about it. The question is, though, how often do our instructional and grading practices actually support this growth mindset?

Let's look again at self-efficacy theory. According to Bandura (1977), there are four main influences on self-efficacy. Some are more influential than others. We'll look at each one in turn and how it relates to the classroom.

1. Previous Personal Accomplishments

This is the strongest influence on beliefs of self-efficacy. If a person has been successful in the past, they is more likely to believe that they will be successful in the future.

As teachers, we might be tempted to think that we cannot influence previous personal accomplishments for students, but we CAN. In fact, we do so every day.  Except for the first day in our classroom in a given school year, every day we teach has a day that came before it, in which we designed learning experiences for students and gave them opportunities to learn and grow.

To help students be successful, therefore, there are specific actions that we can take, such as:

• Have a mastery mindset. Let students do assignments over until they get them right. Let them retake tests until they get the information down cold. I often have teachers counter this by telling me this undermines student accountability, and I can honestly say that this has never been my experience. Students work HARDER because they know that success is possible. The caveat is that you have to have interesting activities waiting for them when they meet a level of mastery on the current assignment. Human brains inherently LIKE challenges that are just challenging enough. If you just have a pile of busy work waiting when they finish...that's when they might stop taking personal accountability for their own mastery.

• Chunk assignments into small pieces and give tons of feedback along the way. This is the easiest way to build self-efficacy: have students experience small successes multiple times a day...by showing that you're there to help them. If you give a giant assignment and students don't even know where to start, they may give up just to feel a sense of control. For instance, I am not a runner. If you asked me to run a marathon tomorrow, I would laugh in your face. If you asked me to do a Couch2FiveK program, however, you might be able to convince me.

2. Vicarious Experiences

Turns out that we DO learn by watching others. Students are likely to learn vicariously from their peers and from their adult models. Try some of these techniques:

• Share your own (appropriate) challenges with students. Take two minutes to talk about your Couch2FiveK program (or whatever challenge you’re currently tackling). Let them know about that doctoral stats class problem that you spent an hour working on, only to realize you had the wrong answer and have to do it all over again. Show them what it looks like to persevere.

• Do more peer conferences. When you give a challenging assignment, give students time to talk to one another about obstacles and how they overcame them. This also helps build empathy and social awareness.

• Keep in mind how students hear you talk to other students. It's fine to have high expectations, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But the whole point of school is that students should feel safe to try new things, and if they see their peers getting lectured without also seeing how the teacher supports all students for greatness, it's possible that students will feel like failure is an option in the classroom...and one that might be easier to take than not.

3. Verbal Persuasion

This is a fancy way of saying, "Telling students they can do it." This is probably the most commonly applied method of growth mindset, but, unfortunately, it also tends to be the least influential when it comes to building beliefs of self-efficacy. Quite frankly, this is why it's important to walk the walk as well as talk the talk when it comes to growth mindset.

Think about it like this: Remember that marathon someone was going to convince me to run? That person could tell me all day long that they believe in me and I can do it, and the only result will be that I will no longer trust their judgment if there’s no other evidence to suggest that I can.

It's the same with our students. We can talk about a growth mindset all day long, but if we're not giving students appropriate feedback and we're not giving them opportunities to learn from their mistakes, to redo work, and to keep working toward mastery no matter how long it takes...nothing we say will convince them.

4. Affective States

This is another fancy term that basically means, "Students who are nervous or anxious don't learn well." Self-efficacy and highly emotional states tend to have an inverse relationship. Some students, of course, ARE able to channel their nervousness into working harder, but for lots of our students, it shuts down the creative processes and they simply focus on doing things to check off a box and become abnormally concerned with whether something is "right

So, what do we do? We not only talk about "failing forward," but we cultivate an environment where failure isn't seen as an "end" but rather than a step on a journey. This goes back to those personal accomplishments. Here's what it can look like:

• Don't let students turn in sub-par assignments. Assignments should be redone and resubmitted until they reach a certain standard. Sometimes teachers will tell me: "But that isn't how the real world works!" Right. School is NOT the real world, and intentionally so. Our job, as educators, is to prepare students for the real world by teaching and modeling the process of redoing things until it's right. It's a skill that has to be taught, and if we just have students turn something in and give them a D or an F, we teach them that yes, failure is an option.

• Think carefully before giving "busy work." Are we giving classwork homework because it's actually something a student needs to work on...or because we want to give classwork or homework? Adding more assignments (especially if students have already mastered the skills) creates that compliance attitude that ratchets up the anxiety for some and causes others to shut down.

In Summary

What are we doing each day as educators to promote a true growth mindset? How are we giving students opportunities to be successful? How are we letting them know that we won't let failure be an option? How are we developing positive cultures where failure is a first step rather than an end? The more that we adopt instructional practices that actually promote self-efficacy beyond just telling kids we know they can do it, the more likely our students are to actually experience success.

How to Think, Not What to Think

by Deana Kolan

“Mine, Mine, Mine,” my students flock around me like the seagulls in Finding Nemo. Drowning in students desperate for feedback,  I realized that I set up my class to tell students what to think, but I had to wonder, am I teaching students how to think?  I realized that I had a “what to think” classroom when I saw these tall tale signs.

• Students flocked to me for answer validation.
• Students asked, “is this right,” or “do you agree”

After I reached this conclusion, I spent months researching the explicit teaching of thinking.  I found a wealth of information, but these are the top three techniques that I have adapted for my classroom.

Be Mindful of Absent-minded Validations 

I did not realize how many validations I doled out in a class period, until I tried to control giving out validations. We were in the middle of a Fishbowl discussion. The students wrote questions, and as I went to pose the questions to inner circle, I found myself saying, “Oh this is a great question!” I was trying to shift the focus and have the students analyze the effectiveness of the student-generated questions based on the conversation that the questions generated, but my constant analysis made it impossible for them to have that moment. I realized that I do this all day long by saying things like “Great response!” In an active attempt to shift to a “how to think” classroom, I learned it was more powerful to ask groups, “Is this a great response?” I created a teamwork discussion flowchart to help students have conversations about the validity of their answers.

Encourage Questioning the System

I love efficient systems. Everyday I think about how to do things faster and/or more efficient, from passing out assignments to streamlining transitions. I realized that if I ask the students for strategies to streamline the classroom procedures a whole new level of engagement develops.  Collecting these student responses, I created an anchor chart in the classroom that celebrates student contributions. Students are more engaged in the learning process, and they are preparing to enter the workforce with a “see a problem, solve a problem” mindset.

Explicitly Teach Thinking 

The brain is a muscle. When I lift weights, it helps if the instructor tells me which muscle group I’m working. I realized that this is true for the students. When they think deeply, they need to know that it is a deep thought. Likewise, when they are looking at things from a surface level they need to know that they can push their brains just like they can push any other muscle in their body to perform. I developed a system called Puddle vs. Ocean. I tell the students to start with a puddle thought. Then we build it into an Ocean thought through collaboration and active thinking engagement. I created this anchor chart to help students distinguish between Puddle and Ocean thoughts.
Not only do we use the Puddle vs. Ocean anchor chart, we also use a wall display to help the students relate the learning intention to the depth of thinking required for the lesson. These visual aides and explicit instruction help the students take ownership of the thinking process.

Favorite Resources on the Topic

Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dluwVks444

How to Get Students to Listen Up: The Psychology of Paying Attention

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

Did you know it's actually a survival technique to be able to tune out stimuli that the brain deems unimportant or irrelevant? Our brains are taking in so much information constantly...but we have a limited amount of long-term storage space. Therefore, as each piece of sensory information is taken in, the brain quickly assesses whether it's important or not. The important information gets moved to working memory (and eventually maybe to long-term memory) and the unimportant gets dumped to make way for new information.

Therefore, when our students tune us out, we shouldn't take it personally. Students today have a boatload of stimuli coming at them all the time; their brains have simply adapted by heightening their "importance" and "interesting" filters. It's a sign that their brains are doing what they were born to do...and that we maybe, in this fast-paced, stimuli-driven world, we need to change something about the way that we're presenting the material.

There are four big ways that brain science tells us we can engage students' attention.

1. Help students understand the importance of what they're learning.

When the brain thinks that information is either interesting or will help us later in life, we are more likely to pay attention to it. Thus means that it's essential to set the purpose for learning. Here are ways that you can do this in your classroom:

• Make connections to real-life. Start the lesson by answering the question: Why do we need to learn this? The more relevant that students find the information, the more likely they are to pay attention to it.
• Use project-based learning (PBL). PBL inherently sets a purpose for the learning. It lets students know: you will need to understanding this information in order to complete this project.
• Emphasize learning intentions and success criteria. The learning intentions tell students WHAT they will be learning, and the success criteria tell them what success will look like at the end of the lesson. Students are more likely to pay attention when they know that the information will be needed in order to be successful.

2. Introduce novelty.

Our brains thrive on new experiences. Humans are natural problem-solvers and novel experiences give us the chance to figure out how to navigate new activities. This means that when we do the same thing day after day, students are far more likely to start tuning us out...even if that thing was originally engaging.

For instance: if the first time that you played Kahoot, your students loved it, so then you started playing it every day...you might notice that instead of the original fervor for the activity, on Day 20, you notice a collective groan when you mention a Kahoot. It's not fun anymore because our brains have figured it out. It's become the Expected rather than the Novel.

Does this mean you have to constantly do something new every day? Not at all. Rather, choose 5-10 favorite activities and go back and forth between them (more ideas for these here). Occasionally (maybe once per unit), throw in something completely new that you can then add to your repertoire. Going back and forth between activities will keep them from getting stale.

3. Vary the intensity.

Imagine yourself sitting serenely in a hammock on a beautiful tropical island, listening to the birds chirping softly and the gentle lapping of waves on the shore. Then suddenly: CRACK! A giant clap of thunder! Do you jump? Of course!

That's because our brains, in an effort to scan for changes in our environment that might require our attention, tend to filter out noises, colors, and lights that are of the same intensity. Any parent who has ever had a teenager knows that eventually you simply tune out the loud rock music emanating from their room, but you sure notice when it stops. In general, though, stimuli that are louder or brighter will get more attention (that's why stoplights use neon colors).

How can you leverage this? If you're using Google docs and want your students to PAY ATTENTION TO THE DIRECTIONS, you can do what I just did: make the directions bigger, bolder, and in a brighter color.

Going analog? Clap your hands before you say an important direction. Suddenly burst into opera voice to share an important thought, if you're the opera singing type. Play snippets of music. Watch video clips (but make sure to stop and talk about them in order to get the full effect). Speak louder and then softer at different parts of your lesson. All of these help students keep their focus on you.

4. Move more!

This goes for both you and your students. Remember that scene in Jurassic Park where they evade the T-Rex by simply sitting very, very still, because T-Rex can only see things that move? Turns out, our brains work similarly in that they are also drawn to movement. A teacher who moves around the classroom while speaking will draw more attention than a teacher who stands still (just don't pace SO much and induce motion sickness).

Not only that, but students who move will get more oxygen flowing to their brains. Yes, it's true that a lot of students are quite happy sitting in their desks and zoning out, but the more that we get them used to being up and moving, the more they'll accept (and maybe even appreciate) it.

So, what does it all mean?

Does this mean that we have to all be singing opera while jumping on desks to capture our students' attention? Of course not (though I'm positive you'll get their attention if you do). But used purposefully, each of those can help compete with all the other stimuli that students face on a daily basis.



Read more here: Schunk, D.H. (2016). Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective (7th edition). Boston: Pearson.

Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Director of Innovation & Professional Learning at Hampton City Schools in Hampton, Virginia. She can be reached at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.

Engaging Minds and Hearts by Infusing the Arts

By Kate Wolfe Maxlow

I can still sing the entire jingle from a Milky Way commercial that played non-stop on TV when I was five. I remember all of King Henry VIII’s wives from a coloring page activity I did when I was eight. I can name all of the states in alphabetical order because of a school play I did at age 10.

The unrelated facts all stuck in my brain for the same reason: I learned them via the arts. Music, visual arts, and acting can all have powerful effects on our abilities to understand and retain information. There’s a lot of research out there on why the arts help students use more regions of their brain and how it can impact achievement.

For instance, check out these cool arts and learning facts:

• Because of its emphasis on pitch and rhythm, there’s more and more evidence of a link between music and reading abilities (Patel, 2003; McMullen & Saffran, 2004; Asoridou & McQueen, 2013).
• We can increase comprehension by asking students to stop, visualize, and create a piece of art that represents their visualization of what they’re studying (Wilhelm, 1995).
• Emotions are strongly tied to memory, and having students act out what they are learning helps activate the emotional centers of the brain (Armstrong, 2008).

Not only are the arts a great way to activate more regions of the brain, students usually find them fun. Sure, there are a few young people who would rather do a worksheet than sculpt with playdough or act a quick skit with their friends, but the majority of kids are going to grab the playdough every time.

Don’t think that older kids don’t feel the same way. I’ve talked to many high school teaches who weren’t afraid to give their students some playdough and the students loved it. In fact, I’ve used it in PDs before and had plenty of teachers who can’t resist it, either.

That being said, there are some tips for successfully incorporating the arts into your classroom:

• Time can easily slip away when having fun. Consider beforehand how much time you want to spend on an arts activity, and stick to it. Students can easily spend an entire class period perfecting a single drawing or creating a song, so it’s important to set the time limits up front and stick to them as much as possible.
• Students who are not used to these kinds of tasks, especially older students, might be reluctant at first to participate in things they don’t think are “real learning.” It can be helpful to share the research with these students so they understand why sculpting, drawing, singing, or moving are “real learning.”
• Arts have a huge impact on memory, so check with students frequently while they work to make sure they’re not unintentionally incorporating misconceptions into their learning.

Ready to try it out?

Here are some quick and easy ways to incorporate the arts into your classroom.

• Have students write a song and/or dance that explains the concepts that you’re learning.
• Instead of a multiple choice test, ask students to do a Quick Draw about the topic as an Exit Ticket.
• Put students in groups of 3-4 and give them a vocabulary word from the current unit and have them come up with a 1-minute or less skit that “acts out” the word without using the actual word. Have other groups then guess what the group is acting out.
• Want more ideas? Check out this Navigation Guide for Integrating the Arts.

Write a Goal

We're always more likely to actually do something when we write a goal. Here are some examples:

• During the first quarter, I will infuse at least one arts activity per week into my lessons.
• During the first quarter, I will ensure that students have an opportunity to sing, dance, sculpt, and act at least once.

Hampton City Schools Teachers

Do you work in Hampton City Schools? Great! Here are some ideas from the Instructional Technique Library that use art. Click on the links to see more ideas for how to use them for YOUR classroom. (If you don't work at Hampton City Schools, you should. Look at all the fun we're having!)

Chatter Drawing: Students create a graphic representation of their knowledge on a topic before and after the lesson, and compare and contrast the two drawings.

Graffiti Art: Students “graffiti” a large piece of butcher paper in groups either before or after learning, then look at themes across all groups’ work.

Show Don’t Tell: Students draw, act out, or sculpt an important word or phrase from the topic and the rest of the class has to guess what it is.






References to check out for more information on the arts and learning:
Armstrong, S. (2008) Teaching smarter with the brain in focus: Practical ways to apply the latest brain research to deepen comprehension, improve memory, and motivate students to achieve. New York: Scholastic.

Asaridou, S. S., & McQueen, J. M. (2013). Speech and music shape the listening brain: Evidence for shared domain-general mechanisms. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 321.

Brown, C. (2010). Children of reform: The impact of high-stakes education reform on preservice teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(5), 477-491.

Garvis, S. & Prendergast, D. (2010). Supporting novice teachers and the arts. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 11(8), 1-23.

Johnson, C.Y. (2013).  “Learn music, be better at math, right?  Study finds it’s not so.”  The Boston Globe.  Retrieved from http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/12/11/music-makes-you-smarter-right-actually-doesn-harvard-study-finds-harvard-study-finds-studying-music-doesn-make-you-smarter/OkdbVM6fQR4hryFuKNm9gJ/story.html

Kraus, N. & Anderson, S. (2015). “Beat-keeping ability relates to reading readiness.” The Hearing Journal, 68(3), 54-56.

Oreck, B. (2004). The artistic and professional development of teachers: A study of teachers' attitudes toward and use of the arts in teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 55, 55-69.

Patel, A. (2003). Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nature Neuroscience (6)7, 674-681.

Saffron, J. (2003). Absolute pitch in infancy and adulthood: The role of tonal structure. Developmental Science, 6(1), 35-47.

Silverman, M.J. (2010). The effect of pitch, rhythm, and familiarity on working memory and anxiety as measured by digit recall performance. Journal of Music Therapy, 47(1), 70-83.

Wilhelm, J. (1995). Reading is seeing: Using visual response to improve the literary reading of reluctant readers. Journal of Reading Behavior, 27(4), 467-503.

Giving Students Choice (Without Giving Up All Control)

by Robyn Crump

Raise your hand if you enjoy being told what to do all the time. I can't see you, but I'm pretty sure your hand did not go up. You like making decisions for yourself and so do I. Well, guess what? Kids appreciate having choices, too. And, we can help them out by infusing choices into our classrooms and teaching our young people how to make those choices responsibly.

Let's be clear. No one is suggesting free reign over the classroom, but there are a couple of ways to provide your students with some say-so in their learning:

✩ Students Choose the Process

Providing students with an opportunity to choose how they learn creates a sense of ownership. Here are some simple ways you can give students process choices:

• Allow flexible seating: give students the choice to work while standing, sitting on the floor, or sitting at their desk. (More on flexible seating ideas here.)
• When researching, give students the choice of what resources to use. Give them selections of books and websites.
• Give students a series of "Must do" and "May do" tasks for the lesson, but allow them to choose the order in which they'll complete them.

OR

✩ Students Choose the Product

Rather than making 25 cloud flip books that look exactly the same, you can let students choose what product they will create to represent their learning. It works like this: give students a list of criteria they have to meet (for instance, needs to have representations of the four main cloud types; needs to list what kind of weather is usually associated with each), a choice of materials (crayons, markers, construction paper, cotton balls, stuffing, fabric, etc.), and then let the kids go to town with their imaginations. The sky's the limit (ha!) as long as they meet the criteria.

Other ways to let students choose the product:

• Choice boards allow students to select one or more ways
• Learning menus give students options between appetizers (small portions of the assignment), entrees (main portions of the assignment), and desserts (extra portions). With learning menus, your students gain the freedom of creating a unique final project.
• Tell students they need to make a digital product using Google Apps, but don't specify whether they have to use Google sites, Google slides, Google docs, etc..

Making It Work

One of the keys to making student choices in the classroom successfully is that teachers have to explicitly teach and model how to make appropriate choices. For instance, if you're going to have a classroom with a couch, you have to model for students how to sit on the couch and how to not sit on the couch. You need a system for determining who gets to sit on the couch when, for how long, and what happens if it's not done appropriately.

If you're letting students choose how to conduct their research, you'll want to give them a graphic organizer to use, model how to choose appropriate resources, and how to share resources if they're limited.

Similarly, if you're going to allow students to choose a product to create to demonstrate their learning, you need to set clear parameters ahead of time around that product and then check in frequently with students to make sure they're meeting those parameters.

In other words, you're not letting go of control. Instead, you're teaching students how to make good choices...which is probably one of the most important skills they can learn in life.

Now that you're a pro...

Create a goal to get yourself started! Sample goals:

• During the first quarter, I will allow students to make at least one instructionally relevant choice each week.
• By the end of the first quarter, I will create five options for flexible seating in my classroom.
• During the first quarter, I will implement choice boards as weekly homework for my class.

Hampton City Schools Teachers

Do you work in Hampton City Schools? Great! Here are some ideas for how to give students choices using the Instructional Technique Library. (If you don't work at Hampton City Schools, you should. Look at all the fun we're having!)

• Show Don't Tell: Students get to choose how they will represent the concept that you give them.
• Thinking Maps: (and other graphic organizers): Let students choose how they will organize
• Socratic Seminar: When done well, students learn to lead discussions around relevant tasks, discussing things they think are important and making connections 

Robyn Crump, Curriculum Integration Technology Teacher

(former Grade Three Teacher)

Hampton City Schools

rcrump@hampton.k12.va.us

Gaming Like a Boss: Simple Ways to Gamify Your Classroom

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

The other day, my kid woke up with a sore throat, fever, and tears. The sore throat wasn't causing the crying, though; he knew that he would have to miss his summer camp that day...the day that they were doing an Escape Room. He had been look
ing forward to it all week and he was devastated.

My thought was: Wow. What if kids felt like this every day? What if they were BEGGING us to go to school because they were just so darn excited about what they would be doing that day?

Games are a great way to get young people motivated in the classroom, too--and they can help students achieve at higher levels when done well. John Hattie (2017) reports that gaming and simulations can result in an average 14 percentile point increase for students. Moreover, cooperative learning (versus individualistic) can result in an average of a 21 percentile point gain. AND, games are fun.

Why do we like games so much? They hit at the very core of human curiosity: in The New Art and Science of Teaching, Marzano (2017) explains that "all games require a search for something that is missing or unknown but circumstances provide clues as to how to complete the scenario." In other words, the same reason why you stay up binge watching that Netflix series instead of sleeping is the same reason we love games--humans have this insatiable curiosity to figure out the what, why, and how.

So, if you want to increase student achievement AND motivation AND just make your classroom somewhere everyone wants to be, consider trying out some games in your classroom.

Quick and Easy Games

• All the games here can be played at any level and take 15 minutes or less. Infuse them throughout your lessons to break up your Absorb activities and give students a chance to connect/do something with the new material that they're learning.
• Kahoot is a great, quick way to get your students motivated and break up an Absorb cycle of learning.
• Somewhat like Kahoot, Quizizz allows students to engage in some friendly competition around your content.

More Elaborate Games

• So You Want to Build a Classroom Escape Room? Good fundamental rules for helping anyone to figure out how to start an Escape Room. Then check out these resources for more specific ideas. Want to incorporate technology? Check out how to do an online escape room (bonus: no materials required!)
• Want to turn your classroom into a D&D style role-playing game? Check out Classcraft. The free version allows students to choose roles and earn points for fulfilling "quests" (you know, like completing homework).
• Why not turn your classroom into a good old-fashioned Who Dunnit? Add mysteries to your classroom! Instead of simply teaching about historical figures or the Pythagorean Theorem, give students clues and have them work together to figure out the day's content on their own.

Hampton City Schools Teachers

Do you work in Hampton City Schools? Great! Here are some ideas for how to turn activities from the Instructional Techniques Library into games. (If you don't work at Hampton City Schools, you should. Look at all the fun we're having!)

• Show Don't Tell: Have students make up gestures that represent concepts...and then have other students guess what concepts are being represented!
• I Think, I See, I Wonder: Introduce a unit with a cryptic picture. For instance: About to teach about ancient Greece? Show students this picture and use the I Think, I See, I Wonder to have them explore the picture, then have a classroom discussion.
• Cubing: Instead of having students complete all the activities, have them roll a die, and then answer a prompt about the given topic based upon the number they rolled. For instance, if they roll a 1, they answer a Remember level question. Roll a 2, answer an Understand level question, etc..

Next Steps

Ready to get started? We all know that we're more likely to actually do something if we write a goal around here. Here are some examples:

• During the first quarter, I will play at least one game a week with my students.
• During the first quarter, I will implement an Escape Room and a Classroom Mystery for my students.
• During the first quarter, I will start each unit with an I Think, I See, I Wonder mystery for students to solve.

Now what are you waiting for? Go have fun!

Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Professional Learning Coordinator at Hampton City Schools. She can be reached at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.

We Like to Move It, Move It: Motivating Students with Movement

by Robyn Crump

Do you often find yourself wondering why your students have difficulty staying focused or engaged? You've spent hours planning a "fun" lesson and students were still sporting the most bored expression ever. Well, here's a solution: MOVE! Allowing students to get up and move while they are learning promotes engagement and retention.

There are two types of movement you should add to your lessons: active learning or curriculum-embedded movement. Active learning occurs when students move about the room. Curriculum-embedded movement fuses content with a specific movement. Either type can encourage student engagement.

Here how you can get started today:

1. Start Small
Don't get overwhelmed with the idea of students wildly roaming about the classroom all day. Students can remain by their seats if you're not ready to make that leap. Have students respond to questions using their bodies. For example, "stand on one leg if you can explain how to multiply fractions". To start small using curriculum-embedded movement choose a vocabulary word and create a simple movement that will help students understand the concept. Students can demonstrate the process of soil erosion by doing the wave.

2. Model Examples & Non-examples
Get up and move with your students! You have to be the model of appropriate movement. Remind them to be safe while moving. Show them the movements you've created and give them time to practice. When my students played Predator vs. Prey (It's just Freeze Tag with roles) I modeled  by showing "predators" where and how to tag the "prey".

3. Frequency (show don't tell)
Try to intentionally incorporate more and more movement. Start with one movement per unit until you're comfortable. Begin working your way up to using movement in every lesson! A quick way to add movement to almost any lesson is playing Show Don't Tell in which students act out specific vocabulary or content and other students take a guess at what they are acting out.

4. Now that you're a pro...
Create a goal to get yourself started! Sample goals:

• During the first quarter, I will use one or more curriculum-embedded movements per unit.
• By the end of the first quarter, I will allow students to participate in a Gallery Walk/Walk-About (students migrate to predetermined stations to complete an activity) at least once per week.

Engage students in critical thinking by allowing them to create their own movements for the content.

There are numerous ways to get your students up and moving. If you work teach in Hampton City Schools, head over to the Instructional Technique Library and choose a new way to add movement to your upcoming lesson! (We recommend Kinesthetic Models, Show Don't Tell, and Graffiti Art, but feel free to put your own spin on things.)

Robyn Crump, Curriculum Integration Technology Teacher

(former Grade Three Teacher)

Hampton City Schools

rcrump@hampton.k12.va.us

Writing Better Emails: Every Professional Email Needs These Five Parts

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

Whether it's to a parent, a colleague, or your boss...at some point, you're writing emails. Emails prove especially challenging for a lot of people because they live somewhere in that fuzzy space between the incredibly informal text and the very formal letter. They're not really one or the other, and it can be easy to err on the side of one or the other.

Of course, it's better to err on the side of too formal than too informal, especially if you don't know the person really well (and if you do know them really well, why not just text them?). Even more importantly, a well-written email should contain the following parts:


1. A relevant but short subject
My email comes to my phone at all hours of the day, including when I'm at home or out and about with my kids. I use the subject line to determine whether it's something I need to answer right away or whether it can wait until we're done riding the Grover Coaster.  I'm really striving for that work-life balance and only want to interrupt my non-work time if I really need to. When I get an email with a subject like this: "Need to talk to you," I almost always have to open it to figure out whether I need to answer it, rather than simply glancing at my phone.

Sometimes, I guess incorrectly and read it right away, even though I didn't need to...or worse, I DON'T open it even though I SHOULD have. Give a subject line that briefly tells the person what the email is about.

But don't be TOO succinct, either. Sometimes, I just get emails that have the title "PD." Given that I'm the Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment and I oversee a LOT of professional development training sessions, that doesn't really provide me enough information, nor help me find your email again if I need it later on down the road.


2. A greeting
If you know the person well, it can be just their name, or even "Hi." You can use "Good morning" or "Good afternoon," but it always feels a little strange to me given that I have no idea what time of day someone will read something. I usually like to lead with something like, "Hello Mr. Smith" (if I don't know the person well or the person is in a leadership position) or "Hello Jane," (if I know the person or am at a collegially level with them). If you're not sure whether the person is a Dr. or a Ms., do your due diligence to look it up. If you still can't figure it out, use a generic greeting ("Greetings!").

Too often I get emails like this:




Rarely do I get messages like this from people I actually know really well (if I know them that well, they usually text me), so the lack of greeting can feel somewhat unsettling.

3. A message that leads with the most important thing first
I admit to having broken this rule A LOT over the years; I always wanted to start with WHY. For instance, if I was asking curriculum leaders to sign up for curriculum review times, I would start by explaining the importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum.

You know the problem, though, right?

I didn't get to the thing that I actually needed them to do (sign up for a curriculum review time) until the end of the email, and most people don't read more than about 3 sentences these days.

A better way would look like this:

This is called the BLUF method: Bottom Line Up Front. If you need an action to take place, you have to put it at the very front (if not even in the subject line).

4. Use formatting to call out direct actions you need people to take and to highlight key words.

Sometimes emails have to be long, and there's no way around it. In these cases, I first start by letting people know that an email is going to be long because it is full of important information they're going to need later, so they WILL need to read it all the way to the end. This cues people to set it aside for a time when they have a few moments of peace and quiet to concentrate.

In this case, I use various formatting to help people skim information more accurately (even if they read it throughly the first time, they're going to want key words pointed out so they can easily skim it when they refer to it later). Check out this doozy of an email:

Here's another example in which I used multiple types of formatting to call out various tasks.

I mildly broke my own rule by not putting the sentence in red first, but that's why I made that sentence red. The reason I didn't flip it with the first sentence was because I knew that I needed to list the dates right below it for the sake of brevity.

You'll also notice in this email that I said I would send a calendar invite with the due date. I try to do this ANYTIME something is due; it not only helps other people remember when to turn things in, it reminds ME to check to make sure that they did.

5. A closing/signature that includes your name, organization, and best ways of reaching you
Quite frankly, it drives me bananas when I get emails from people that require me to figure things out for them, but there's no information telling me where the person is from and I spend more time either 1) hunting for them on our organization's resources, or 2) having to email them back to ask where they work before I can even get to solving their issue. 

For instance, I run over 30 Google Classrooms for various PD courses. Every school in our district has its own Google Classroom. Too often, I'll get an email from a teacher that says: Hi, can you invite me to my school's Google Classroom? But there's no signature and no information about where the person works or what they do.

You can see an example of my signature in the above email. For reference, I made the picture using Canva's business card templates, then uploaded a picture into my signature in Gmail. While you can purchase programs that do something similar, it only takes a few extra steps to do it yourself for free.

You can see that emails don't need quite all the bells and whistles that go into the formal letter, but they still need a certain amount of structure in order to fulfill their intended purpose. Adding these five pieces is a great start to any professional email.

Kate Maxlow is the Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for Hampton City Schools. She can be reached at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.