Know your Ingredients
Refrigerator Soup
My mom has a gift for cooking. She isn't fancy, but anyone who has ever gone to my parents’ house for dinner knows she’s a gifted cook. Her food (and her home) is full of love. My mom doesn't like waste and has a gift of using what she has and turning it into something extraordinary. I can't think of a better example of this talent than her “refrigerator soup.”
Many cooks have a recipe they love to follow, and with a few exceptions, they make it the same way every time. However, my mom is different. She looks at what she already has on hand, what vegetables are past their prime, and what ingredients complement each other, and then creates her recipe accordingly. If you sat at the kitchen table and watched my mom, I am sure you would wonder how on earth all the ingredients she pulls out of the fridge would work together. But every time, with love and patience, she makes it work. She would tell you that sometimes the results turn out better than others and rarely do the soups taste the same, but every time, my mom manages to make magic from the ingredients in our fridge.
My mom’s soup reminds me so much of teaching. Teaching isn't a recipe to follow; we don't get to pick our ingredients. Each year, our classroom fills with various ‘flavours’ ready to be incorporated into our classroom community. Just like with my mom’s soup, it’s essential to get to know the ingredients first; you’ve got to understand them before being incorporated effectively (and successfully) into the classroom. Each year, it will look different and will take some refining along the way. If we follow my mom's example, with lots of love and patience, we will look at the incredible gift of the students we receive in our classrooms and see what we can create together.
Getting to know our students is imperative to creating a classroom culture upon which our literacy structure can be built. Our students' interests, families, heritage, and culture are all essential aspects of who they are and meaningful ways for us to connect with them. Knowing more about who they are can help us connect them to texts and areas of interest that will support their reading, writing, and oral language skills.
Getting to Know you Activities
Artifact Bags
Read The Matchbox Diary by Paul Fleischman, highlight how the small items each told a story about the characters life. Show your students items that represent you and your identity (culture, family, interests). Have the students guess what these items tell about you. Ask students to bring a few small artifacts that represent them (their family, interests, culture, hobbies). Have the other students ask questions about the artifacts, or draw conclusions about what the artifacts may tell about the student. For younger students have them share what the items represent about their identity, for older students have them write about their identity and what the artifacts represent.
Same, Same But Different
Read the Story Same, Same but Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw. Have the students compare and contrast the two main characters in a venn diagram. Then, pair the students up and have them do the same activity finding the similarities and differences between them and their classmates.
My Identity
Ask students to brainstorm what they think makes up an identity. Have them create a visual representation of the different things that make up their identity. Use any visual representation they want to represent themselves.
Pieces of Me
Design a 6-10-piece jigsaw puzzle with each piece showcasing a different part of your identity. For younger students send the activity home with parents to get them to help create the visuals for their child to help show who they are.
What are some activities you do at the beginning of the school year to get to know your students?
What’s your Point?
I grew up with educators as parents. My dad was a high school teacher and counsellor, and my mom went back to University later in life to become an elementary school teacher. I was incredibly privileged to have parents who created an environment at home where learning was encouraged, and we were fully supported. Early in my school career, my dad would sit beside me at the kitchen table and help with my homework. Whenever I wrote something, he always asked, “What’s your point?”. As I grew, I learned that I needed to have an answer to that question before sitting down with Dad for homework help. While writing my sixth-grade speech for the public speaking contest, I confidently sat down with what I knew was an excellent idea, only to hear my dad say, “Great ideas, what’s your point?”. This supportive question has become essential to my teaching philosophy: why am I teaching what I’m teaching, and why do the students need to know this?
In this digital age, we often find great lesson ideas on social media and decide to try them. While these ideas can be engaging, we sometimes realize that we are not clear on the learning objective or purpose behind the activity. Knowing your “point” is a critical aspect of teaching. Going in with a clear understanding of what you want and what you expect your students to learn brings clarity and direction to your lessons and your classroom. We can better hit the target when we know what we are aiming for.
Knowing your point, clearly, allows you to begin to find or create activities that are directly connected to your learning intention. Start with your point and then look for the ideas and activities to teach and practice that skill or concept.
Teacher Tip - Before planning a lesson or unit - What do you want students to know? How will you know they know it?
We can better hit the target when we know what we are aiming for.
Low Floor, High Ceiling Tasks
“I’m finished” and “I don’t understand”, two dreaded statements that often happen simultaneously after handing out an activity to your class. Fast finishers whip through the activity, often without challenge, and quickly shoot up their hand (or just yell out “I’M DONE.”) Emergent learners struggle to get started, often staring blankly at the page, raising their hand or simply sitting quietly at their desk, unable to start. These two statements became the bane of my teaching existence. I began creating tasks for my early finishers, and ran myself ragged trying to meet the needs of my emergent learners. No matter what I did I continued to feel like I was failing these groups of students (Shelley Moore calls these students the Outside Pins).
During one summer I was doing some reading on math instruction and I came across the statement “Low floor, High Ceiling tasks (LFHC)”. Peter Liljedahl spoke of creating rich math tasks that were open ended, meeting the needs of your most emergent (low floor) students and being open ended (high ceiling) to allow for your extending learners. I reflected on many of the tasks I had created for my students and realized there were some simple and creative ways I could remove the barriers to these activities to better meet the needs of all of my learners.
Tips to Creating LFHC Tasks
Know your point - I’ll likely write an entire post about the importance of this. But for now, know the target you want your students to hit. What skill or concept do you want them practicing? This simple question often helps you narrow the focus of your activities and weed out the activities that are really not teaching anything (my friend Faye calls this the “fluff”). Additionally, think about how you would like them to “Show that they Know” the point.
Know your Students - What can your most emergent learner do, and what skills do you need them to practice? What does your most extending learner need to feel challenged? If the point of your lesson is to work on identifying the phonemes in words; can you create an activity that as a low floor has students identifying specific initial sounds, and as a high ceiling, asks students to sort items based on either the initial, medial or final sounds. Create learning activities that considers these students ahead of time (proactively not reactively).
Explicitly teach and practice the skill - One of my critical mistakes was introducing an activity or worksheet at a station without teaching it, or practicing it first. As a whole class, explicitly teach the skill or concept and practice it together. In my early career we called this the “Gradual Release Model”. We taught it (I do), we practiced it together as a whole class (We do), and then students practiced it on their own (You do).
Remove the barriers - When designing your learning activity, think about what barriers will get in the way of the students learning. Is there a worksheet that has the students identify the initial sound of the picture shown? How could you create an activity that practices the same skill, but isn’t limited to the number (or sounds) of the pictures on the page. (Shameless plug - my Little Trinkets for Big Thinking kit and activities are a great LFHC way of practicing phonemic awareness)
There are some really simple ways to remove barriers from traditional activities. Once I know the learning goal, I begin searching for activities that will help students practice that skill. If I find a great activity, say in Canva, I ask myself how I might adapt it to become more of a Low-Floor, High-Ceiling (LFHC) task.
For example, if I want students to build their vocabulary knowledge, I won’t just give everyone the same list of words to find, define, and identify in a passage. Instead, I’ll teach students what to do when they come across an unfamiliar word while reading. As a practice activity, we’ll record words we don’t know (and want or need to learn), then work on defining and understanding their meanings.
In our literacy stations, students will use their “just right” texts to find words they’re curious about or don’t yet understand. The text becomes the differentiating factor, allowing students to learn vocabulary that is meaningful and instructionally relevant to them. They can then share their learning with others or add the new words to a shared word wall.
What are some great Low Floor, High Ceiling Tasks that you use in your Literacy stations or instruction. Share below.
See Below for some examples of ways to adapt activities to be more LFHC.
Making Time for It All
When I set out to write this book, I had no idea what an incredible gift it would be to reflect on my educational journey. I have been truly blessed by exceptional educators who generously shared their wisdom with me over the years. I am the product of the many people who inspired, guided, and supported me throughout my career.
As the child of two teacher parents, I grew up surrounded by a deep love of learning. My very first practicum experience was shaped by two remarkable mentors—seasoned educators who took me under their wings and showed me what lifelong learning truly looks like. They modeled the power of collaboration and innovation, and gave me the freedom to take risks.
Throughout my early career, I was fortunate to work alongside generous colleagues who shared their resources, their time, and their encouragement. I’ve had the privilege of working with principals who believed in me, leaders who gave me the permission to explore new ideas and supported my vision, even when it didn’t fit the mold.
And then there are the extraordinary women who spoke life into my career—mentors who challenged me, believed in me, and helped me see what was possible, even in moments when I couldn’t see it myself.
Writing this book has been a chance to revisit those moments and the many lessons I’ve learned along the way. It has reminded me of the joy in this journey, and deepened my desire to share what I’ve learned with others.
As I was writing this book, I chose to reach out to the people who made a difference in my career. Some of them I hadn’t spoken with in decades. In one instance, even though I spoke to her often, I decided to tell her all the ways she had impacted my life and my career. I told her I acknowledged her in my book and let her know how excited I was for her to read it. Two weeks later, she passed away suddenly. I am so grateful I took the time to say thank you and tell her about the impact she had on my life.
Who has inspired you? If you can, take a moment (or two) to think about the people who helped you become the educator (or person) you are today. Take it one step further, reach out to them and tell them they made a difference in your career and in your life. Don’t wait!