Time for a book study and Blog hop! I have teamed up with some fellow bloggers
Alissa,
Linda,
Aimee, and
Angela to explore Classroom Habitudes by Angela Maiers.
I had heard of these skills with older students and as an early childhood special educator I was not sure how applicable this would be to my youngest learners and I didn't want to have to add something more to my already standards based full plate. I am still curious to know what "21st Century Learning" entailed, which is why I wanted to participate in this book study.
This book will discuss the following 7 skills needed for 21st century learning. Good start! We do all this in PreK!
- Imagination
- Curosity
- Self-awareness
- Courage
- Adaptability
- Peserverance
- Passion
Introduction
The introduction did a great job of laying the foundation for the rest of the book and defined each of the 7 skills in a nice chart that is easy to read and understand. It also includes a self-assessment to measure your own 21st century learning skills that will help you determine what areas you are strong in and areas that you may want to explore further. This book address "ALL" learners and as a special educator that was very nice to see! Habitudes is a great new word that Angela Maiers brilliantly created from a combination of the words "Habits" and "Attitudes". Yes! We can address these skills in a Pre-K classroom with our little learners! There are also QR codes that will take you directly to websites and other media that will provide you with examples of the content in the book. You will need a QR reader app on your tablet or phone to access these resources.
My favorite quote from the introduction:
"The learning habits and attitudes that we teach our students will enable them to become effective contributors to this world."
Chapter 1- Nurturing Genius
I enjoyed this chapter and it's challenge to you as the reader to reconsider what a "Genius" is. There is a wonderful definition that was crucial in changing my thinking when hearing or thinking of who is a genius and how it relates to Habitudes.
Additionally, this chapter describes a framework called "Name It, Claim It, Sustain It" and discusses a variety of ideas and lessons to use for developing classroom habitudes. The lessons will have to be adapted to meet the needs of the our little learners in Pre-K but it is not impossible and in fact, those who work and play with preschoolers are already laying the foundational work for future development of these 21st century learning skills.
The chapter ends with reflective questions for you as the educator to address to help you develop an environment that will foster skills development.
My favorite quote from Chapter 1:
"You can't settle for the ordinary when you comprehend you're extraordinary."
Chapter 2- Imagination
This chapter address imagination, the first of the 7 skills set discussed in the book. She begins by discussing why imagination is important followed by several suggestions for developing imagination in the classroom through discussion, conversation, playing games, solving problems, and modeling for our students. We do this all the time in Pre-K! Again, the author invites you to reflect on your own imagination and resources to refer to for yourself as the educator. Student resources are provided and include children's books, which is very helpful for those educators like many preschool teachers who like to incorporate literacy and books into their lessons.
My favorite quote from Chapter 2:
"Imagination is our mind's eye and gives us the capacity to jump from present facts to future possibilities."
Next Friday I will share my discoveries from chapter 3- Curiosity and chapter 4-Self-Awareness. In the meantime, hop on over to these ladies blogs to read about their thoughts on this book.
This last week we read chapter 3 on Curiosity and chapter 4 on Self-awareness.
Both of which are so engrained in our little learners! This should be interesting!
Chapter
3: Curiosity
The chapter on curiosity starts with a discussion on why curiosity is
important. As any teacher knows, curiosity is crucial for feeding the
motivation for learning.
·
Pitch: Why curiosity matters.
·
Anchor: Discussion using an anchor chart utilizing
the discussion format of KWL chart (What do you Know, What do you Want
to learn, What have you learned?)
This is a great tool to use in Pre-K!
·
Conversations that Last: How to keep the
conversation going.
The next sections provide lessons to use with students.
·
Lesson 1:
Building Curiosity through focusing
attention. There are reflective questions and a link to a great Personal
Curiosity Inventory that helps you address your own level of curiosity.
·
Lesson 2:
Building Questioning Tools. This
lesson focuses on how to tie asking questions to curiosity. In the Pre-K
classroom, we can do this when a student asks us a question by saying, “I can
tell you are curious about this because you asked me a question.” Followed by
facilitating a way to find more information. She also discusses using books to
facilitate how different characters demonstrated curiosity.
·
Lesson 3:
Asking Genius Questions. This lesson
is intended to focus on questioning rather then discovering answers. We can do
this in Pre-k by starting with teaching the children the difference between a
question and a statement. There is a great handout you can print that lists
different ways questions can be started.
·
Lesson 4:
Asking the Right Question and the Right
Time. This lesson addresses the following 6 types of questions with the
goal being teaching the students to be aware of how they are framing questions
and for what purpose. In Pre-K we help to lay that foundation for questions by
helping our little learners to know the difference between a question and a
statement.
·
Clarifying questions
·
Sorting and sifting questions
·
Strategic questions
·
Planning questions
·
Elaborating questions
·
Comparing questions
Chapter
4: Self-Awareness
This chapter again begins with the importance of self-awareness followed by
the Habitudes definition.
·
Pitch: Why self-awareness matters.
·
Anchor: Discussion on self-awareness and
introduction to learning styles and creation of a learner portfolio. This part
of the book was very useful to me. I use portfolios to keep student work in to
show administration, parents, and the child their progress and development
during the year. This next year I will incorporate student input and goals into
my portfolio.
·
Conversations that Last: How to keep the
conversation going. This section focuses on creating a self-awareness inventory
and provides guiding topics to include.
The next sections provide lessons to use with students.
·
Lesson 1:
The Story of Me through using “heart
mapping”.
·
Lesson 2:
What Makes Me Me? Addresses
scenarios, feelings, words to describe self, and many more guiding questions.
·
Lesson 3:
My One Special Thing consists of
student interviews that continue to explore their selves.
·
Lesson 4:
We Have a Problem addresses the use
and power or our inner voices. How it relates to our thinking, learning, and
mind wandering. Strategies we can use to help us get back on task. This lesson
focuses on reading text but can also be addressed with our little learners who
are not yet reading but doing a lot of thinking!
The level of thinking that this book has ignited my desire to address these
skills and how applicable this is to Pre-K has impressed me even though it is
geared towards kindergarten and up! I have so many ideas!!
Next week, I will be blogging about chapter 5 Perseverance and chapter 6
Courage.
Using this link I was able to find a lot of resources available for this book. Including
printable reproducible, suggested resources, and tools. You will have to create
a free account to get access to these tools but I would recommend it!
While the lessons again were geared towards kindergarten and
up, with some creativity you can easily incorporate awareness and teaching to
these habitudes. Additionally, this would be a great book study to do as a
grade level team to discuss creative ways to address these skills in preschool
and prekindergarten.
Next Friday I will share my discoveries from chapter 4- Perseverance and
chapter 6-Courage. In the meantime, hop on over to these ladies
blogs to read about their thoughts on the latest chapters in the book.
Week 3 Classroom Habitudes Book Study and Blog Hop
Chapter 5:
Perseverance
This chapter on perseverance is a wonderful reminder of how
important it is that we encourage and support our little learners in
pre-kindergarten. It will set the stage for future success or failures
depending on the child’s ability to persevere even in adverse situations.
Her first of four total lessons in perseverance is a
wonderful idea that I plan on incorporating into my classroom this next year! She
had a great discussion on the role and importance of failure.
·
Lesson 1:
What You Do Makes You! Connection
between behavior and self.
·
Lesson 2:
Life is What Happens How others
overcame difficult situations.
·
Lesson 3:
Failure Leads to Success
·
Lesson 4:
Failure is Our Best Teacher
Chapter 6: Courage
This chapter provides “six essential steps” for approaching
situations where courage is required. Excellent steps!
While reading this chapter, I had a moment of reflection and
thought of an opportunity missed on the playground where I could have told one
of my students that they were courageous and started helping her understand
what courage means. This is something I can work on!
·
Lesson 1:
Looking Fear in the Face through
awareness.
·
Lesson 2:
Using Strong and Weak Words is a
lesson on the relationship between words and actions.
·
Lesson 3:
Getting Uncomfortable with Being
Uncomfortable
·
Lesson 4:
Knowing Everyday Heroes
She talks of teachers and our ability to be courageous day after day.
This book is great! Next week I will continue this fantastic book hop with a
blog post about Passion and Adaptability!
Chapter 7: Passion
Chapter 7 on Passion was interesting. I was thinking of how
young children are naturally passionate about everything they are doing!
However, if you look closely, you will begin to see some
areas that a child seems to be more passionate about than others. Maybe one
child shows more passion towards interacting with others, caring about living
things, not giving up with solving a problem, or engaging in a specific
learning task. I see my role in this area as a facilitator of the beginning
workings of a potential passion by providing additional opportunities, resources,
and support for young children to explore their interests.
·
Lesson 1:
Talking about passion.
·
Lesson 2:
Detecting your passion.
·
Lesson 3:
Preserving passion
In this chapter, Angela Maiers provided a link to an excellent TED talk
featuring Sir Ken Robinson. You can go and check out the talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution
Here is my favorite quote from this chapter!
Chapter 8:
Adaptability
Chapter 8 was one of my favorite chapters to read and in my
opinion, one of the most important topics of this entire book. Adaptability is
such a crucial life skill and many of our young children are quite good at
adapting to change. Many changes for young children happen in such a short
amount of time that they really don’t have a choice but to adapt.
·
Lesson 1:
Picturing an adaptive learner.
·
Lesson 2:
Stepping outside the box.
·
Lesson 3:
Turning “Yeah, But’s” into “Yes, How’s”
·
Lesson4: Learning Lifelong Adaptability
I loved that Angela was very intentional with leaving the topic of
Adaptability as the last topic of her book. It is an excellent way to end this
book and the saying, ”saving the best for last.” couldn’t be more accurate!
This is the end of our Classroom Habitudes book study and blogging. I hope
you have enjoyed reading about this book and its relation to children from a wide variety of ages. I
look forward to hearing your stories as they relate to the Classroom Habitudes.
