Who What When Where and How

The Who What When Where and How strategy engages students by tapping into youth culture and Hip Hop. Basically, students write a four-beat song to demonstrate their thinking on a particular topic.

Chorus: (all students sing)

Who, What, When, Where and How
Who, What, When, Where and How

Verse: (individuals or groups of students sing--see sample below)

In World Literature I employed this strategy to make their setting brace map come to life. Student groups were assigned a setting in The Handmaid’s Tale. They dissected the setting description to come up with people (cast), props (objects) and infrastructure (scenery). Those were the main brace map parts, and students dissected those main parts into the sub-parts of concrete nouns that would appear in those areas of the brace map if they were directing a play of the book.

From the brace map students easily wrote the Who What When Where and How song. Here’s an example of a verse hanging on my student Hall of Fame from The Handmaid’s Tale for Offred’s bedroom.

WHO: Offred Alone
WHAT: She lives simply
WHEN: Most of the time
WHERE: A Tiny Room
HOW: Forced to Remain

Each line has four beats. I lined up a singing volunteer from each group in front of the room so that the students could sing the story. The entire class sang the chorus between each verse. The chorus is just Who, what, when, where and how repeated twice. The entire class also did a call and response, calling out who, and letting the appropriate singer answer.

This day was met with mixed reviews from "one of the best classes ever" to "I am not going to sing."

Jabari Mahiri: NUA Culture Consultant

photo from UC Berkley


Jabari Mahiri, a professor at UC Berkley and former English teacher in Chicago public schools, presents culturally responsive strategies at National Urban Alliance workshops and conferences. Marhiri's book Shooting for Excellence: African American and Youth Culture in New Century Schools is given to NUA cohort participants and is an excellent starting point for discussing issues of race and teen culture in the classroom.

For a list of all of Mahiri's publications and for more biographical information, visit his Berkley home page.



The Edina CoP will discuss chapter 4 of Shooting for Excellence entitled "Changing Classroom Discourse and Culture" at their next meeting on Nov. 27.



Here is a brief breakdown of what is contained in the subheads of Chapter 4:

• "Classroom Discourse" explains teacher talk and control
• "Classroom Culture" discusses tracking and institutional structures
• "Problems of Changing Classroom Discourse and Culture" includes information on the history of hatred and racism in schools and contrasts Ms. Jackson's World Literature class with her Ethnic Literature class, which is a tracked, low-level class.
• "Possibilities for Changing Classroom Discourse and Culture" analyzes Ms. Park's classes and her emphasis on building relationships.
• "Culture and Curriculum" discusses the need to connect with teen culture, and rap music is explored as one way to do this. Mahiri provides lesson ideas that do not involve listening to rap music, but rather reading and writing about text-based material about rap.

Anticipation Guide to Engage Students

An anticipation guide is a set of true/false or agree/disagree statements that are presented to students prior to informational text (including math chapters), films, and guest speakers. The strategy sharpens a student's thinking skills while building curiosity. When information is memorable, student learning increases.


The steps:

1. The teacher writes several declarative statements that are based on the upcoming reading, film, chapter, speaker, etc. The best statements are possible yet open for debate.
2. Before the reading, students decide on their response. Students could complete the anticipation guide with just their own opinions and then check with a partner or group.
3. The group discusses some of the statements as a whole class, having students tell the reasoning behind the response. The teacher can prompt: "Why do you think so?
4. Students read the assigned material and change their answers so that they leave class with the correct answers to study.

Generally, anticipation guides are used with non-fiction texts so that students can reason with prior knowledge. With fiction, the author could take the reader anywhere. However, anticipation guides can be successful with fiction when the agree/disagree statements get at the big ideas or themes of the novel.


Here are some example fiction statements for anticipation guides:


Huxley's Brave New World--
A society's stability is hindered by people expressing their individuality.


Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn--
A natural father's rights are more important than a child's welfare.


Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing--
Before deciding to marry someone, people need to agree with their parents' wishes.

This strategy is culturally responsive because students share their reasoning behind statements with small groups and the entire class. Since the reasoning is based on what students know, various cultural backgrounds will emerge. Hopefully, this leads to students appreciating other backgrounds and life experiences.

English 10 teachers used an Anticipation Guide during the first week of school where students agreed or disagreed with statements about life if high school. This activity worked well.

KC even created an anticipation guide of personal information as a way for students to get to know their teacher.

Soundtrack Assignment

As a final project for Catcher in the Rye, American Lit teachers will have students create a soundtrack of the songs that remind them of the books themes or characters. Each soundtrack song is accompanied by one paragraph that explains why the song was chosen. This assignment really allows students to showcase their teen culture.

Here's a full description of the assignment:

The Catcher in the Rye Soundtrack

Most movies today come with a soundtrack of songs and music heard in the film. These songs sometimes are incidental (i.e., not important) to the film, but other times they add meaning to the plot or highlight the emotional aspects of particular characters.

For this assignment, you must create a soundtrack for The Catcher in the Rye that represents theme, illustrates growth of character, and reflects the plot meaningfully. The soundtrack that you create should be appropriately and respectfully representative of the novel.

Here are specific criteria:

1. You must have a minimum of eight songs. You may choose any kind of music. You may want to think about having a “theme” to your music; that is, have all music be from one genre. (WWHLT? What would Holden listen to?)

2. At least three of these songs must be for specific characters. That is, find a song that best represents each character you choose. In essence, this should be the character’s “theme song.”

3. At least three songs must be meant for specific scenes of the novel. Focus on specific, meaningful scenes. Ask yourself: if this scene were made into a movie, what music would be played in it?

4. At least one song must represent a theme found in the novel overall.

5. Not all the music you choose must have lyrics. Instrumental selections are also appropriate.

6. For each song you choose, you must write a paragraph explaining your choice. Comment on the connection between the music and the novel. The song must fit the character/scene/theme well. For each song, use at least one quotation from the book as support for your choice. Also, you will probably want to quote specific lyrics in your discussion. Make sure you offer insightful reasons to justify your selections and connections.

7. You must either provide lyrics for each song or make a tape/CD with the music on it. You may wish to just present the lyrics that would be heard in the movie, or you may provide the entire lyrics since the full song would appear on your soundtrack.

8. Create the cover jacket for the CD soundtrack jewel case (front and back). The cover should include the name of the CD and at least one visual reference to the novel; the visual(s) should also connect to the characters/scenes/themes that you emphasize on the soundtrack. Other text that you may wish to include on the front or back: a list of the songs/performing artists, credits, recording company information, dedications, lyrics. Push your creativity here.

Thinking Map Frames

Every Thinking Map should have a frame around it. Some people think that the frame only goes around the circle map because the posters show only that one framed, but that is really an error in the posters. Last year, RuthMary drew frames around all of her posters to emphasize the point that EHS's first NUA consultant, Rick Olenchack, used to say, "It don't mean a thing if it don't have that frame."

The frame around the maps provides an extension of the thinking and helps the teacher understand the students frame of reference. Frames help bridge the culture gap because multiple backgrounds come across with references to personal and cultural experiences, values and belief systems. When a Thinking Map is done as a group activity, the frame can even be split into sections to indicate which portion came from which student. This emphasizes that each student brings a different frame of reference to the classroom activity.

Below is a tree map from Thinking Maps Inc., Training Manual on uses for frames of reference.

NUA Insights and Applications from the CoP

On the last day of the high school NUA CoP, people shared the following summary statements from their key word notes page to provide a quick review of the weeks activities:

1. NUA strategies address culture, language and cognition and require students to think about their thinking.


2. NUA and Thinking Maps address classroom management by bridging the culture and achievement gaps.


3. NUA provides a variety of strategies to assist students in learning with particular attention to culture, language and cognition.


4. NUA strategies provide a common language to foster equity in learning that sometimes doesn't occur.


5. Thinking Maps connect all disciplines to all cultures.


6. I have a better grasp of NUA foundations. The research with Gifted and Talented students has mixed results since 10% of students said their writing skills declined because of Thinking Maps, but students were self reporting.

In addition, CoP members shared the following specific strategies that they plan on implementing in the classroom in the coming weeks:

1. Ann will use the multi-flow map with students to discuss the causes and effects of controlling their asthma and the double bubble map to compare and contrast rescue inhalers with preventative inhalers.
2. Elizabeth will implement the notebook this year to cut down on photocopying and help students get organized.
3. KC, and the other English 10 teachers, are using an anticipation guide for community building in the first few days of school. KC has teacher facts on one anticipation guide. Another one English 10 will use is "High School Anticipation Guide" with questions about academic honesty and high school concerns. Many of the questions will be answered in the syllabus.
4. Jim is doing his anticipation guides on surveymonkey.com and linking to his blog.
5. Betsy pointed out that blogger just added the poll option so that teachers could do a weekly poll on an issue.
6. Jackie has a flow map of the semester units on her bulletin board to build interest. Heidi (not a CoP member but an NUA Cohort member who shared this idea) is building a flow map across her wall as a unit progresses. Scott will consider doing this in his math class on his back white board. He could have each day's outcome summarized with a Thinking Map which flows into the next day's map summary or items learned list.
7. Jackie is also adapting many of Baruti Kafele's classroom management ideas. She has a vision statement on the bulletin board, a wall of fame in back, teleflip text messaging for positive comments, student goal setting on a multi-flow map, highlighting students through their Ipods, and putting an essential question of the day and agenda on the white board each day so that students know what they are supposed to get from each day.
   

Text Messaging Teleflip Tip

At the NUA CoP we discussed using text messaging to build relationships with students and bridge the gap between teen culture and teacher culture. Using teleflip.com allows teachers to use Microsoft Outlook to send text messages to students. All you need to do is type on the Outlook TO: line the phone number.teleflip.com.

I'm planning on getting student cell phone numbers on the first day of school, and I will try to text a few students each day. I will use text messages to remind students of missed assignments or if I need to meet with them, but mainly, I plan on using text messages as positive reinforcement for something I witnessed them doing well in class.

My husband read about teleflip in PC World, and he reminded me that sending the messages in Plain Text from Outlook will make the messages easier to read on cell phones. To get to plain text, simply click on the drop down menu where the HTML default is located on your email message.

The Star Tribune had a story on text messaging using email today, and they said how easy it is to do if you know the recipient's cell phone service provider. I guess the reporter had not heard about teleflip.com which requires no provider information. It's even easier than the Star Tribune realizes. Sometimes it pays to have a Tech Geek, PC World reading husband.

Technology and NUA: A Perfect Fit

After Scott McLeod's staff presentation, the NUA CoP discussed the connections between Scott's philosophy of technology integration and the culture, language and cognition philosophy of NUA. The CoP decided that the two philosophies mesh well, and teachers working on closing the cultural and achievement gap would be served well by incorporating blogs into their courses.

Here's why . . .

1. Students are engaged because they are happy to meet teachers in a communication forum very familiar to students, thereby closing the cultural gap between students and teachers.
2. Students learn the ethics of the Internet and are able to police themselves.
3. Students of all cultures have a voice on the blog, so students are more equal.
4. Shy students have a place to express their opinions.
5. Students can express opinions that they were afraid to bring up in class.
6. Teachers are equipping students with a new literacy (language) for the 22nd Century.

The following question was asked in our CoP: "Do the relationships built online transfer to face-to-face classroom relationships?"

KC West, who just finished her Master's Thesis on blogs in the classroom, stated that the current literature on the topic does not claim that the relationships transfer to face-to-face friendships. KC's article on the new literacies is being published next month, so stay tuned for more information on this topic.

Closing the Gap by Connecting Culture, Language and Cognition

Below is a brief summary of "Closing the Gap by Connecting Culture, Language, and Cognition" from Student Successes with Thinking Maps. Click on "post a comment" at the end of this entry to comment on the full article.

Yvette Jackson, the Executive Director of the National Urban Alliance, hopes to change teacher perceptions about underachieving students. NUA also hopes to bridge the cultural gap between students and teachers. Jackson and NUA believe that a shift needs to occur from what has to be taught (content) to how learning happens (process).

NUA believes in the following equation:

Learning = (Understanding + Motivation) (Competence and Confidence)

NUA believes that Thinking Maps are "essential tools in bridging the cultural gap between teachers and students" because they address the inter-related nature of culture, language and cognition.

NUA does acknowledge that Thinking Maps are one tool to give teachers a language to address the needs of underachieving students because they help eliminate textual blockers, both semantic and structural blockers. This mediation happens because Thinking Maps provide a clear language to discuss metacognition, and the maps become external memory patterns for students.

Thinking Maps are a common language that can be transferred across disciplines and grade levels.

Bryonn Bain: Hip Hop in the Classroom

photo from bryonnbain.com


Bryonn Bain, who has joined the National Urban Alliance as its Artist-in-Residence, is Brooklyn's Famed Spoken Word Poet. Bain currently teaches at Columbia University and at Riker's Island Prison. Bain first came into the national spotlight when he was falsely imprisoned by the NYPD during his second year at Harvard Law School. Following his false imprisonment, Bain wrote the article "Walking While Black" for The Village Voice, and that article earned him a Mike Wallace interview on 60 Minutes.

For more information about Bryonn, visit his website bryonnbain.com.

Bain proposes that it is important for teachers today to connect to teenagers through music, and since the music that many teens, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, listens to is Hip Hop, teachers should be incorporating Hip Hop into their lessons. In fact, Bain asserts that 70% to 80% of Hip Hop consumers are white, suburbanites. Bain, in a WMEP/NUA Reunion class on March 7, 2007, cautioned the teachers present not to be racist in their critique of Hip Hop.

During the NUA Hip Hop session, Bain briefly lectured on the components of Hip Hop--the DJ, the graffiti artist, the B-Boy or B-Girl breakdancer, and the emcee (also known as the spoken word poet or rap artist). Many people think of Hip Hop only as the rap portion of the Hip Hop culture. Bain claims, "Rap is something you do; Hip Hop is something you live."

Bain proposes that teachers use Hip Hop in the classroom not only as text to analyze, but also teachers should have students create their own Hip Hop. Creating Hip Hop works especially well in history classes because Hip Hop can tell the story of a historical event. Besides connecting to youth culture, teachers who employ Hip Hop in the classroom will be promoting creativity and discovery, using rhythm, rhyme and repetition to enhance memory and verbal skills, and they will be allowing listening and dancing to release student stress.

Bain's Hip Hop lesson ideas have been greatly influenced by Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. For an excerpt of Freire's book and a look into his educational philosophy, click here.

James McBride, author of The Color of Water, would most likely agree with Bain's assessment because McBride discussed the importance of Hip Hop in the world today in the April 2007 issue of National Geographic. McBride's article traces Hip Hop back to its African roots and proposes that music is a great equalizer among people.

NUA Culture Consultant Augusta Mann holds a similar view that teen culture today has its basis in African American culture.

Final Word Protocol

The CoP will be conducting a Final Word Protocol text-based discussion on a chapter by Baruti Kafele. Basically, a Final Word Protocol involves a group of four or five students responding to quotations that they found of particular interest in an assigned reading. The timed discussion allows for only one person to be speaking at a time, and the listeners must respond to specific comments made by the first speaker. Click here for a handout on Final Word Protocol instructions.

The Final Word Protocol forces all students/participants to listen carefully to the speaker because they need to respond to the speaker's comments. Often times people are thinking about what they will say when it's their turn to speak rather than listening to the speaker. Since all students must discuss the assigned text, students are more likely to read the assignment and be prepared because of peer pressure.

The Final Word Protocol is a culturally responsive strategy because all students are allowed to share their perspective.

If you use the Final Word Protocol in your classroom, be sure to click comments below to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this strategy.

NUA Principles of Learning

Many principles of learning underlie NUA's work. The following five are particularly useful because they are relevant across the full range of grade levels and content areas:

1. Students must bring their own perspectives to lessons so that they will see the relevance of the content to their own lives.
2. Students must make thoughtful and active use of their prior knowledge in order to learn new information.
3. Students need challenges to keep them motivated and engaged in learning.
4. Students need opportunities to talk to each other to construct, process, and reflect on meanings while hearing and appreciating one another's points of view.
5. Students need to represent their learning in interesting and creative ways that enhance their comprehension and retention.

Principal Baruti Kafele

photo from principalkafele.com




















Although Baruit Kafele is not a National Urban Alliance culture consultant, his ideas about reaching and teaching students from all cultures overlap well with NUA's culturally responsive teaching practices. Kafele is currently a high school principal in Newark where his student body is mainly Latino and African American. WMEP's cultural collaborative brings Kafele to the Twin Cities so that West Metro teachers can enroll in his one-day workshop where participants receive his book A Handbook for Teachers of African American Children. To learn more about Principal Kafele's background, read his complete biography and watch his 11-minute video presentation that introduces his educational philosophy.

One day on an airplane, Kafele pondered what educators need to be effective with students of all cultures. That day, Kafele's 50 I's for Effective Teaching emerged, and those common themes run throughout his book A Handbook for Teachers of African American Children.

The Edina High School NUA Community of Practice decided to read the chapter from Kafele's book entitled "Managing Your Classroom" for a final word text-based discussion. Further comments about Kafele's ideas can be posted on this blog entry.

Thinking Maps as a Transformational Language for Learning

Below is my summary of David Hyerle's chapter, "Thinking Maps as a Transformational Language for Learning," found in the book Student Successes with Thinking Maps from Corwin Press, 2004. The National Urban Alliance partners with Thinking Maps, Inc. to provide teachers with the tools needed to make thinking explicit for students.

By providing a common language for teachers and students, thinking maps have been closing the achievement gap in schools across the United States. Currently, 4000 school faculties in the U.S. have been trained to use thinking maps in their classrooms.

David Hyerle, who brought the Thinking Maps to schools over 15 years ago, refers to the maps as a transformational language because the maps can be used across disciplines, cultures, and ability levels; they also work with students from kindergarten to college. Once students and teachers have a common visual language, higher order thinking can be explicitly displayed and assessed.

Some teachers believe that the maps are just an interesting set of graphic organizers, but they are so much more. Graphic organizers are static and focus on isolated content tasks whereas Thinking Maps are a theoretically grounded language based on eight fundamental cognitive processes. In fact, since the brain is a pattern detector (binding together data through neural patterns to network information) and since all humans communicate with language, employing a brain-patterned language makes sense.

The classroom benefits for using Thinking Maps are numerous. First, they are flexible tools that can be used in isolation or in combination with other maps to solve multi-step problems and for thorough reading comprehension. Second, Thinking Maps are great assessment tools since they clearly and explicitly demonstrate what a student is thinking. Third, maps provide an opportunity for focused cooperative education, which is a key to bridging the cultural gap between students. Fourth, Thinking Maps allow a teacher to mediate a student's thinking and literacy development, not simply remediate students through repetition of content. Finally, Thinking Maps bridge the cultural and discipline gap between teachers in a school since they provide a common language for instruction.

Hyerle ends his chapter with a call to all people involved in the educational process to use Thinking Maps, not just classroom teachers. Thinking Maps foster constructivist conversations that not only allow for efficient problem solving, but also make staff meetings more reflective and less procedural.

Cultural Consultant: Augusta Mann

photo from nuatc.org

Augusta Mann works closely with the National Urban Alliance to provide culturally responsive teaching strategies that "touch the spirit" of all students. Augusta asserts that students learn best when their youth culture is drawn upon, and today's youth culture is based on African American culture. Therefore, she believes that focusing on strategies that are especially relevant to African American students will improve the achievement of all students regardless of their cultural background. Augusta details her beliefs on her website successfulteachers.com.

Augusta believes that the Five Teaching and Learning Patterns for African Americans are:

1. Ritual (Affirmations/performances)


2. Rhythm (In music, speech and movement)


3. Recitation (Oral performance/memorization)


4. Repetition (To enhance meaningfulness)


5. Relationships (Relationships of love, respect, and belonging) (Recognizing ties between humans and nature) (Scientific study of patterns in nature and the phenomenal world) (Making connections between school work and students’ life experiences)

The Nine Supportive Practices for Augusta's Touching the Spirit cultural connection philosophy are:

1. Expectations of Excellence


2. Continual Search for Patterns


3. Insistence on Working Toward Mastery


4. Teacher Modeling of Skills and Processes


5. Intensive Direct Instruction and Practice


6. Study of African Deep Thought


7. Focus on Discourse, Inquiry,and Creative and Symbolic Thinking


8. Using Knowledge for Social Criticism and Community Action


9. In-Depth Study and Performance of African and African American Culture

Augusta is a recognized expert on teaching vocabulary, and her full biography can be found at the NUA website.